The Skipton and East Lancashire Rail Partnership (SELRAP) have reported that ‘East Lancashire has been shunted aside by Transport for the North' after the group studied the statutory sub-national transport bodies' latest strategy.
The SELRAP group has revealed that a number of large-sized communities within East Lancashire have been forgotten by the plan with no mention of supporting transport connections to Leeds and Bradford.
The group has reported that a number of communities in East Lancashire have high levels of economic and social deprivation and have been particularly impacted by the pandemic. The group feels that Transport for the North's latest strategy does not deliver the potential to level up such areas, an example of which being:
- Train travel from Pendle or central Burnley into Leeds, which is only 25 miles away, takes two hours. Reopening the strategic railway from Skipton to Colne's “12-mile long-missing link” would provide a direct connection for these communities to the busy city of Leeds.
Changes such as this can be transformational for local communities with the ability to easily and efficiently access education, jobs, and even support the local economy via leisure travel.
SELRAP's Chair, Peter Bryson says:
“TfN plans to spend £29 billion on rail improvements in the North over the next 25 years, but not a penny is coming to East Lancashire. Thus TfN has simply ignored the pledges made by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt when they relaunched, in Accrington earlier this year, the Conservative's manifesto commitments to Level-Up the UK”
SELRAP are now calling for Transport for the North to prioritise the railway from Skipton and Colne.
All the people who talking about Leveling Up may know that all of it will not happen.
The problem with East Lancashire is that it doesn’t have a big enough voice unlike Manchester which gets most of the invest thanks to the Andy Burnham who screems loud and clear.
The Government when it comes to public transport, (Rail) is only interested in those that have the largest voice.
SELRAP has Been given promise after promise on reopening this vital strategic rail link for some years now and each time it gets to a point it thinks it’s going to get over the line the Government comes up with more work needed, and putting this in a diplomatic way I seriously think senior civil servants are running rings around the Government on a number of small rail projects which actual stack up! And are cheap to implement, as apposed to HS2 which isn’t even being built to the original plans which would have connected most of the UK to the EU via rail.