Rail Services (Bexhill)

– in the House of Commons at 7:14 pm on 14 December 2004.

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Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Derek Twigg.]

Photo of Gregory Barker Gregory Barker Opposition Whip (Commons) 7:16, 14 December 2004

I start by thanking the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, Charlotte Atkins, not only for coming to the House this evening to answer my debate, but for the profoundly important decision that she made two weeks ago to allow the Bexhill link road to go ahead.

A new route to join the A259 to the A21 is vital to my constituency and will reduce pollution and chronic congestion. The new proposal is on a smaller scale; nevertheless, it is a significant improvement on the old Hastings bypass. I know that the Minister had to examine the proposal carefully. However necessary any new road might be, important environmental considerations must always be weighed up. I am glad that she agreed with me and the vast majority of my constituents that in this case the benefits of the scheme significantly outweighed the costs.

I know that the decision was a financial close call, as funding for new transport projects in our part of the country is limited, and the Minister had to turn down several competing projects. I am particularly grateful to her for taking the trouble to meet me and others from my area to listen to the arguments in person, before reaching her decision. Her courtesy and diligence will stand her in good stead as she climbs the ministerial ladder.

The green light for the link road has come as a huge relief to my community. It is a major step forward in our endeavour to regenerate the economies of both Bexhill and Hastings, and with it to improve the life chances of so many local people. The link road is vital to the creation of new jobs and to the opening up of land to build sustainable homes for local families, and in so doing relieving pressure to build in villages in areas of outstanding natural beauty. First and foremost, the Minister's decision recognised that improved connectivity is crucial to the future of the whole area.

It is almost unbelievable that at the same time as that historic decision to improve the road infrastructure of our area, the Government, through the Strategic Rail Authority, could even countenance axeing the direct train service to Gatwick, East Croydon and London from Bexhill and significantly downgrading the coastal rail service.

Earlier this year, the SRA published a document entitled, "Brighton Main Line, Route Utilisation Strategy", which has a nice picture of the clock at Brighton station on its cover. Richard Bowker's foreword to the document makes it clear that the document is primarily concerned with changes and improvements to the running of services from Brighton to London termini. Indeed, Mr. Bowker's foreword does not mention Bexhill, which gets a mention only towards the end of the executive summary.

The report states:

"there are a small number of disbenefits of the strategy compared with today's level of service".

The third bullet point on page three states:

"In order to deliver better performance across Eastbourne, and to reflect the local nature of the market between Eastbourne and Hastings, the through service from Hastings and Bexhill to London (via Gatwick) is now proposed to start and terminate at Eastbourne."

That seemingly innocent afterthought to this completely Brighton-centred document would in fact have a devastating effect on the town of Bexhill were it allowed to be implemented. The psychological impact alone would be enormous. The net result of the proposal would be to lengthen the journey time to London and increase the scope for significant delays. Most importantly, however easy the SRA endeavours to make a platform change, the inescapable necessity of changing trains will have a profound effect on every passenger's willingness to use the train service.

I appreciate that the principal aim of the route utilisation strategy is to improve performance, but there is very little in the SRA proposal that would be regarded by my constituents as an improvement, and a very great deal that would be seen as highly damaging. The whole town of Bexhill has been united in condemning these proposals, which saw the light of day only at the very end of the statutory consultation period.

Opposition to the plans goes right across all political party boundaries, and they have been strongly criticised by Rother district council, Hastings borough council, East Sussex county council, the Bexhill town forum, the Bexhill chamber of commerce and the Hastings and Bexhill taskforce, on whose board I sit and whose other members include the South East England Development Agency and the Government office for the south-east. I want particularly to pay tribute to the energetic campaign of Rother district council's lead cabinet member for transport, Councillor Ian Jenkins, who was one of the first to spot the dangers that the proposals pose to Bexhill.

The impact on the town would hit trade, tourism, commuters, elderly passengers and students. I shall deal briefly with each of those groups. Many commuters have written to me to make clear their objections to the scheme, but none has put their case more articulately than my constituent, Mr. John Cormode, a management consultant residing in Bexhill who specialises in change management and business research. In a letter to the SRA, he wrote:

"I was absolutely appalled to learn that the SRA is actively proposing changes that will cause a further considerable deterioration in the train service for customers between Bexhill and London, in a Government regeneration area.

By abolishing the only direct rail link between Bexhill and London, making passengers change at Eastbourne, will add at least 30 minutes to the journey time—assuming the connections always work. If the connections do not work we can look forward to adding at least an hour and a half to the journey time! I am a season ticket holder from Cooden Beach to London and the daily journey time each way already takes 2 hours . . . it would be quicker to travel to Darlington or Brussels than Bexhill! The service will particularly deteriorate for the journey home, when there are even fewer trains from London to Bexhill than in the morning. At Cooden Beach up to 12 passengers regularly use the 0635 service—all of us will now not reach London until after 9 o'clock with further journeys to our place of work on top of this.

The excuse that 'new' rolling stock is not compatible with the 'old' does not mean that these changes need to be made. You find it possible now to run 'new' rolling stock trains to London at 0635 and an 'old' rolling stock train for my journey home. To avoid inconveniencing your customers and to encourage the use of public transport all you need to do is to continue to run the complete trains of either old or new stock until you have enough of the new to withdraw the old, without compromising the service to commuters.

Your proposals make even less sense at a time when central and local government, all the regional agencies and local business groups are doing everything possible to regenerate Bexhill and the surrounding area. I can think of no other single act by an agency like yourselves that will ensure that these regeneration plans and the local economy goes rapidly into reverse. The £6 million spent on creating the biggest arts centre in the South East at Bexhill, the funding of the University Centre in Hastings, or improving Bexhill and Cooden railway stations will not lead to regeneration if the SRA's proposals mean that they make it very much more difficult for the public to reach them, or people to visit, live and work from Bexhill."

The Bexhill town forum has been equally vociferous in its opposition to the proposals. Mrs. Margaret Jones has made the forum's concerns clear to the SRA, reflecting its unanimous vote on 30 November to oppose the SRA's plans. The forum is particularly concerned about the effect that the loss of a direct service from London will have on the De La Warr pavilion. The De La Warr will reopen next year, after an extensive refurbishment, as an international arts centre and the biggest contemporary art gallery in the south-east of England.

It is estimated that 50 per cent. of its visitors from outside Bexhill will reach the De La Warr by train. In 2001, the De La Warr attracted 500,000 visitors, of whom 75,000 came directly from London. In 2005, the refurbished De La Warr is expected to attract more than 750,000 visitors, of whom 150,000 are projected to come from London. The De La Warr Charitable Trust told me that

"we are preparing a programme of National Work to encourage people from London and the suburbs to visit. These are events and work that will not be seen in London. We aim to produce world class programmes for a national audience. Any disruption in transport would have a severe impact on our ability to attract a national audience."

Imagine if Glyndebourne opera house, which successfully attracts a large audience who travel by train every year, had to tell opera goers taking the train at Victoria that they needed to change halfway through their journey. It would fundamentally undermine their ability to operate.

We must not overlook the elderly population in Bexhill, who depend on the train service, especially its direct link to Gatwick airport. Bexhill has the second largest pensioner population in Britain and the highest proportion of over-80s in the south-east. The prospect of changing trains with suitcases and luggage would be a profound deterrent to those who do not wish to take the car to the airport.

It is also vital when attracting new businesses into our area as part of the regeneration initiative that not only Bexhillians should enjoy direct rail access to Gatwick but foreign visitors landing at the airport should be able to enjoy direct rail access to Bexhill. The public transport policy officer at East Sussex county council rightly pointed out that the proposals are not only about cutting a direct link to London but proposed cuts to the volume of services. Pevensey Bay and Cooden Beach station would lose one service to London an hour, and the very existence of Collington and Normans Bay stations could be threatened.

I should like efforts to be made to encourage more people off the roads and on to the trains. The proposals would have the opposite effect. The cuts, together with previous changes, have not happened anywhere else on the network on such a scale. Transport professionals have serious concerns about the proposed connection at either Eastbourne or Polegate. Previous promises about connecting trains from Brighton to Hove have not been kept and it is clear that a train coming along the coast would not wait for a delayed service from London, leaving Bexhillians who were travelling home absolutely stranded.

I summarise by saying that these ill-thought-through and poorly researched proposals would have a devastating effect on Bexhill. They would drive more people on to the already crowded roads of East Sussex. Mr. David Getty, the president of the chamber of commerce and tourism in Bexhill, said:

"The reduction in service levels resulting in the abolition of a direct rail link from Bexhill to Gatwick and London will seriously hinder attempts to regenerate business in Bexhill. At a time when the local public and private sectors are working closely together to secure investment for a range of regeneration initiatives their success is jeopardised by the decision to downgrade Bexhill to a town with no direct rail link to London.

Major local employers in the fields of insurance and education, particularly those teaching English as a foreign language, will suffer through the loss of the direct link, particularly to those towns competing for this business which do have a direct link such as Eastbourne and Hastings"— and Brighton. He continues:

"The roads around Bexhill are already congested and the effect of the proposed changes will be to send more commuters, theatre-goers and tourists"— and students—

"onto the roads. They will not risk the uncertainty of changing trains at Eastbourne—where there are already regular instances of delays due to lack of connecting stock or drivers . . . they will simply travel by road to Polegate or Battle to join London trains from Eastbourne or Hastings respectively.

The SRA has said that 'it cannot fund assistance towards regeneration'—no one is asking it to do so; but it should not be permitted to threaten regeneration without the clearest of compelling financial data. The SRA has not come close to meeting this basic requirement: it has been unable and unwilling to state how many people use the direct train under threat" using ill-thought-through numbers.

The SRA proposals take no account of the projected growth in population of Bexhill, which will follow directly as a result of the Minister's historic announcement two weeks ago, nor of the projected growth in visitors to the area as our economy regenerates and tourism revives. The SRA proposals are simply a formula to run down our railway to a point where it could lose a critical mass of passengers. If that were allowed to happen, the inevitable logic of the SRA's arguments is that the line would be likely to close altogether in the years to come. The SRA, in a letter to me of 8 December, said:

"We accept that changing trains will inconvenience through passengers and discourage people from making these journeys. We also accept your comments that this would have an adverse effect on the local economy."

It went on to say that

"the SRA is not responsible for prescribing a holistic provision of transport services for an area."

If joined-up thinking on transport is not the remit of the Strategic Rail Authority one wonders why it bothers to include the word "strategic" in its name. Such thinking, however, is the responsibility of the Government, the Department for Transport and every transport Minister. I therefore make a plea to the Under-Secretary, who has shown good judgment to date. I urge her in good faith to intervene and direct the SRA to step back from these destructive proposals, and safeguard the benefits for Bexhill and the surrounding area, as promised by her historic decision two weeks ago.

Photo of Charlotte Atkins Charlotte Atkins Assistant Whip, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport 7:31, 14 December 2004

I congratulate Gregory Barker on securing this debate, thus providing an opportunity for us to discuss rail services to Bexhill. I thank him, too, for his kind remarks about the approval of the link road a few days ago.

Bexhill is currently served by the Brighton to Hastings stopping service, which runs at a frequency of two trains an hour for most of the day on Mondays to Saturdays. An hourly direct service to and from London Victoria runs seven days a week. It is also possible to travel to Ashford, destinations along the south coast and other London termini such as Charing Cross, Waterloo East and London Bridge by changing at Hastings, St. Leonards, Warrior Square and Brighton. At present, those services use a mixture of mark 1 slam-door rolling stock and modern air-conditioned rolling stock. Most of the older rolling stock will be replaced by the end of 2004, and all of it will be replaced by mid-2005. The performance of the services that serve Bexhill is measured by the public performance measure published by the Strategic Rail Authority in "National Rail Trends". In the past year, 81.8 per cent. of trains arrived at their destination at the time shown in the timetable or within five minutes of that time. By comparison, the figure was 84.6 per cent. in the previous year, and 84.5 per cent. for all London and south-east commuter service operators. The slightly lower level of performance this year, especially when compared with that of similar operators, can be attributed to the teething problems of the new rolling stock and the growing unreliability of the mark 1 slam-door trains, which are being replaced. Most of those teething problems have now been overcome, certainly in the operation of trains, although further work on heating and air conditioning systems is still needed. Clearly, that does not affect train performance, although it does affect quality and thus passenger satisfaction with train journeys. When all the new rolling stock is in service it is expected that train performance will improve.

The SRA's Brighton main line route utilisation strategy clearly aims to improve the performance of train services and ensure that optimum use is made of available train and network capacity. We have set the SRA tight affordability constraints and it must demonstrate that any changes are financially robust. It proposes that one stopping train an hour between Brighton and Ore will call at Bexhill, and one fast train an hour from Brighton to Ashford will also call there. Two trains an hour will operate between London Victoria and Eastbourne. They will run up to ten minutes faster, but they will not serve Bexhill directly. Passengers from Bexhill who wished to travel to Gatwick airport, East Croydon and London Victoria would have to change at either Eastbourne or Polegate.

The level of service from Hastings and St. Leonards to London Bridge, London Waterloo East and London Charing Cross via Tonbridge is not affected by the Brighton main line rail utilisation strategy proposals. The SRA accepts that changing trains will inconvenience through passengers and risks discouraging people from making their journeys by rail. It is, however, working on making the connections between the Ashford to Brighton and the Eastbourne to London train as seamless as possible. By changing at Polegate, passengers would not have to cross the footbridge. They would alight from the train, wait on the platform and board the following train. The direct train service from Bexhill to Lewes would be reduced to two trains an hour, rather than three, but the direct link to the county town would be retained.

One of the SRA's reasons for reducing the train service east of Eastbourne is the low level of patronage. The figures for travel between Bexhill and London—both Charing Cross and Victoria—suggest that there are, on average, approximately eight people per train travelling in each direction from Bexhill to London. Some of those passengers are presumably going via St. Leonards, so the number using the Brighton line service to Victoria is fewer than eight per train. In total, about 12 people per train travel from stations between Eastbourne and Hastings to stations on the Brighton main line, so in practice those are the only people who will be inconvenienced by the SRA's proposals for changes to the service.

Photo of Gregory Barker Gregory Barker Opposition Whip (Commons)

Does the Minister accept that average figures can often be misleading as to the pattern of travel? If she goes to Bexhill early in the morning and takes the 6.34 train, for example, she will find it packed with commuters, many of whom do not buy tickets, but buy season tickets in London and therefore do not show up in the figures that she quoted. I accept that on a wet Friday afternoon, very few people will be travelling on that link, but at peak times those trains are absolutely full.

Photo of Charlotte Atkins Charlotte Atkins Assistant Whip, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport

I appreciate the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. I thought that he said that 12 people were travelling on that early train from Bexhill.

Photo of Gregory Barker Gregory Barker Opposition Whip (Commons)

That is from Cooden Beach—one station. There are five stations along the coastal strip in my constituency, the principal one being Bexhill. The gentleman who wrote in travelled from Cooden Beach station, which is one of the minor stations that are threatened.

Photo of Charlotte Atkins Charlotte Atkins Assistant Whip, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport

I thank the hon. Gentleman for clarifying that. If he wants to bring the point about season tickets into the equation, it may well help to boost the low usage figures. I appreciate his point that average figures obscure the reality of the journeys that individuals make, which may change from time to time, from season to season and from train to train, but the figures that I gave suggest that the SRA is right to consider the impact that the suggested change to the service will have on a relatively small number of people. If he has additional information or evidence, he should allow the SRA to see it.

We understand that any direct service that is replaced by a connecting service might suffer a passenger reduction, but I think that the hon. Gentleman would agree that resources must be focused in the most effective way to improve the overall financial position of the railway. The proposals will also relieve congestion at Hastings station.

One of the main recurring points relates to the effects of the Brighton main line route utilisation strategy proposals on the demography, economy and regeneration of Bexhill and Hastings. We are aware that significant regeneration efforts are being made—the hon. Gentleman mentioned the link road, where the issue of regeneration was clearly crucial and that the De La Warr pavilion is being reconstructed—to encourage significant numbers of visitors to travel to the area by train.

It has also been mentioned that it is desirable that links to educational and arts establishments are provided and it has been suggested that there is the need for direct access to the transport and business hubs of Gatwick airport, Clapham Junction and East Croydon. Any route utilisation strategy is focused on improving performance and better use of track and train capacity, within the constraints of affordability. The SRA—this is reflected in its appraisal guidelines—examines only measures which might be taken to improve the efficiency and viability of the railway.

Photo of Gregory Barker Gregory Barker Opposition Whip (Commons)

The argument about regeneration—the Minister knows well what Bexhill and Hastings face in terms of regeneration—can be deployed where roads are concerned, but rail is a much more environmentally sensitive form of transport and the regeneration argument, or wider arguments, cannot be deployed. A narrow, stand-alone, financial case must be made. Surely the same wider arguments that can be deployed in favour of building a road ought to be deployed in favour of rail.

Photo of Charlotte Atkins Charlotte Atkins Assistant Whip, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport

Obviously, the regeneration effects of rail are significant, but there is a direct route from Hastings which, as I know from our discussions, is not too far from Bexhill. Such routes are available and many people will choose to use them. I do not underestimate the effect of the inconvenience for those passengers who use that route, but given that there are direct services from Hastings, it is not an impossible journey.

The SRA met several local stakeholders affected by the Brighton main line route utilisation strategy proposals before the consultation document was launched. Those meetings were generally at the county council or regional assembly level. The SRA noted the apparent lack of information dissemination by some of those stakeholders, which it recognises as a problem, and that will be addressed directly with stakeholders in all future SRA work.

We have given directions and guidance to the SRA to develop the capacity of the railway, both of the trains and the network, so that they are both utilised to the maximum. In doing so, it must have very strong regard to the cost-effectiveness and affordability of services. We are not seeking to close any stations or lines, but we are aiming to rationalise services, which may mean that some previously through services will now involve a change of trains. The SRA is working to ensure that those changes are as smooth and trouble-free for passengers as possible, as it and we are aware that some passengers are actively discouraged from using trains if they have to change. We hope that the increased punctuality and reliability of services and the reduction in journey times, even including the time taken to change trains, together with the new modern rolling stock fleet, will encourage existing passengers to continue to use trains and encourage others to do so.

Photo of Gregory Barker Gregory Barker Opposition Whip (Commons)

The Minister rightly talks about encouraging passengers to use the train service, on which I agree. Why, then, has the SRA told me that it is precluded, when making its assumptions on future train use, from taking advantage of any forecast of increased growth? It is not allowed to take into account the planned homes that are to be built—nearly 2,000, thanks to the Minister's link road—or the additional hundreds of thousands of tourists who will come into the area to visit the De La Warr. The only figures that it is using in its financial model are historic figures, which incorporate a period when the De La Warr was closed.

Photo of Charlotte Atkins Charlotte Atkins Assistant Whip, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport

On that detailed point, the best thing that I can do is write to the hon. Gentleman, which I am happy to do.

The SRA aims to publish the final route utilisation strategy for the Brighton main line next spring, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will feed in both his comments and those of his constituents before that time.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at sixteen minutes to Eight o'clock.