Highways Agency - Safe roads, Reliable journeys, Informed travellers

Blight

If you want to move house, a road proposal may make it difficult for you to get a fair price for your home. This is known as 'blight'. This section explains how to find out what help you can get.

You may be able to serve a blight notice on us to buy your home if:

• we have announced the preferred route;
• our announcement prevents you from getting the asking price for your property on the open market; and
• we are likely to need your property.

There is a special form for this. Please ask your local Agency office for a copy and for advice on whether you can apply. You will find addresses and phone numbers of our local offices in the contacts section.

By law, we must give you a decision within two months of receiving a valid blight notice. Otherwise we must buy your home if that is what you want us to do.

But you do not need to sell your home at this point. Once we have accepted your blight notice, you can sell your home to us at any time within the next three years. If we have accepted a blight notice on property blighted before 25 September 1991, owners can insist that we buy their property at any time up to the point when we serve a notice to treat. (Compensation)

We will buy your home at its full market value (as if the road had never been proposed) on the day of the agreed sale. So the price we pay will be affected by changes in the property market and you must decide when it is best to sell.

If we do not accept your blight notice, you can challenge our decision and ask the Lands Tribunal to decide on the matter. The Lands Tribunal is an independent organisation set up to deal with this type of dispute. You can contact them at 48/49 Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1JR.

Until a preferred route is announced, we will not normally be able to buy any property. However, we may do so if you are unable to sell at an 'un-blighted' price and are suffering financial hardship because your property is on a route published for public consultation (step-by-step guide). In certain circumstances we may buy your home even if it is not directly on the preferred route, as long as it is or is likely to be seriously affected by our scheme. Ask your local Agency office for advice on this.

If you are thinking of buying a home, you or your solicitor will normally make a land search enquiry to the local authority to find out if the property you are interested in is on a preferred route (step-by-step guide). You can then ask your local Agency office for more details of what is proposed.