HS2 has unveiled new designs for the green tunnel at Burton Green and Kenilworth Greenway in Warwickshire, with improved environmental features including extensive tree planting, new footpaths and better connections to local woods.

Since receiving community feedback in November 2019, HS2's contractor Balfour Beatty VINCI has been working with the local authorities to develop the detailed design of the HS2 route through Burton Green.

The railway will travel through the area in a 400-metre green tunnel, providing an opportunity to create an extensive new landscape over and around the tunnel. New designs, now being shared with the local community, show how the roof of the tunnel will integrate seamlessly with the existing landscape.

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In addition, a key feature for this area is the realignment of the Kenilworth Greenway, which provides a link from Burton Green to Kenilworth and Berkswell for walkers, cyclists and horse-riders. Large-scale planting of native trees and shrubs will provide biodiverse habitats for wildlife, shield the Greenway visibly from the new railway, and re-establish vegetated connections to Black Waste Wood and Little Poors Wood.

To construct the green tunnel, a cutting is created along the line of the existing Kenilworth Greenway, with a tunnel 'box' including a roof constructed within it. The cutting is then back filled with soils as the basis for recreating the landscape and ecological mitigation concealing the tunnel and establishing the landscape legacy for Burton Green.

Steve Fancourt, HS2’s Senior Landscape Design Manager said: "As we work to deliver Britain's new high-speed railway, we are presented with an unrivalled opportunity to leave behind a lasting, positive legacy for communities. Our designs show how we will 'drape' the landscape over the tunnel by placing soil to conceal the tunnel roof to support new native woodland planting, reconnected wildlife corridors and new public footpaths. New ecological features such as wildflower species found locally, and bat and bird boxes will create bigger and better wildlife habitats."