The Skipton – East Lancashire Rail Action Partnership (SELRAP) recently held its 2025 Annual General Meeting (AGM), with its campaign to reopen the Colne-to-Skipton line top of the agenda.
The meeting took place at Colne Town Hall, with members attending both in person and online.
Members of the Partnership’s Executive reported on their work over the past year, covering issues such as media, membership (which now stands at nearly five hundred) and campaigns.
SELRAP is a campaign to reopen the Skipton to Colne railway line, which would connect the Lancashire town of Colne to the North Yorkshire town of Skipton. The line between the two stations closed in 1970.
Last year, SELRAP expressed its disappointment that the then government had made no money available for this important twelve-mile stretch.
Members attending this year’s AGM heard that the Rail Minister, Peter Hendy, had agreed that re-opening the line was a “good scheme” and “worth doing with a good business case” but that “no money was available at present.”
Members also heard a report on the recent ‘Convention for the North’. This had taken place in Preston, and was attended by Metro Mayors and business representatives.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner MP had spoken at the event, and had said that “the key to economic growth in Lancashire is connectivity”.
The guest speaker at the Annual General Meeting was Mike Smith. He spoke about his work as Programme Director of Restoring Your Railway, the fund for reopening closed lines that was scrapped last year, and as National Programmes Network Rail System Operator.
Smith described working with campaigning groups such as SELRAP as a “privilege”, and praised them for putting in a lot of work to get railways re-instated.
He also highlighted three recent successes in getting lines re-opened. These projects had already been underway before the Restoring Your Railways fund was scrapped.
The Borders, Dartmoor and Northumberland Lines are now open and running passenger services. Smith reported that they all had good business cases and the support of their local authority.
He also reported that the use of rail travel has recovered following the Covid-19 pandemic. Rail passenger travel for leisure, including tourism, is now higher than ever before, with a particularly notable increase in weekend leisure travel.
Responses
Lord Hendy, pulling the wool over the eyes of people in East Lancashire, and the rest of Northern England about funding not being available? Pull the other one! After your Government has done a tax raid on Millions , and the fact you keep funding Multi Billion £ rail projects in the South of England, what is the truth? Are you afraid of your paymasters like the Bond Market? Who are in full control of the Government, and have been for many years.
The Skipton to Colne rail line should have been reopened 10 years ago but for the UK Governments inability to make the right decisions to rebance the UK economy, and the North South devide..
I remind Government that East Lancashire in particular has never had any large transport investment not even when they built the M65, the bit between Burnley and Colne almost didn’t get built it was Lancashire CC that found the funding for this not Central Government.
If private investors can originally build our railways why can’t the Government allow this now?