Plan for new Bradford rail station to be revealed next week – Minister …
And Bradford Council’s Leader has described today’s announcement as “significant progress.”
Rail minister Huw Merriman told MPs that the Government will set out its initial proposals for how a new station could be opened in the city within days.
The plans will be published as part of the Department for Transport’s response to a Transport Select Committee report on the Government’s Integrated Rail Plan (IRP).
The IRP controversially dropped plans for a high-speed, Northern Powerhouse Rail station in Bradford city centre in favour of a much more scaled down version of the cross country line.
The station would be for a new line connecting Bradford with Leeds and Manchester, vastly reducing journey times and freeing up existing lines for increased freight journeys, reducing the amount of traffic on local roads.
The station would have been built on the site currently occupied by St James’ Market – off Wakefield Road.
The IRP instead proposed the new works would mainly involve improvements to existing infrastructure – leading to claims from local politicians that the Government had “betrayed” Bradford.
Local politicians had said the station could add £2.6bn in GVA (gross value added) to Bradford.
The only positive for Bradford was a proposed improvement of the existing line between the city centre and Leeds – which would be fully electrified.
However, there has since been little detail from Government on how this upgrade would be achieved.
An artist’s impression of the planned Northern Powerhouse Rail Station (Image: Bradford Council)
Mr Merriman’s Transport Select Committee visited Bradford last year as they developed a response to the IRP.
At the time he told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that failure to deliver the station would squander Bradford’s potential to become “an engine room of the Northern Powerhouse” and “undermine the project of Levelling Up”.
He also questioned the Government’s claim that the proposed station would be too far from the city centre, saying the distance “does not seem to us an insurmountable barrier.”[1]
Today, Mr Merriman told the Transport Select Committee: “We remain committed to the core parts of the Integrated Rail Plan, effectively the entire Integrated Rail Plan.
“Where we’ve been looking, following the comments made by the Prime Minister during last summer, was getting better options assessed for Bradford and enabling Bradford to put forward a new station to help them with their city centre regeneration.
“That’s something that we’re very keen to do, which will obviously mean alterations to the Integrated Rail Plan were we to do that, but I believe that will be a positive.
“We’ve been working very positively with the Treasury and also the Department for Levelling Up with regards to Bradford so I think that’s an area where I very much hope that our response will be welcomed by the committee.
“I can assure you that we remain on track to get that to you by the end of this month, so by next week.”
Councillor Susan Hinchcliffe, Leader of Bradford Council, said: “We have never given up on our rail ambitions for Bradford. “We’ve kept working extremely hard in making the case to government for the massive growth opportunity that Bradford district offers the rest of the country.
“As the local authority we are investing in several large-scale place-making projects to modernise our city centre and towns. This has led to high levels of private sector interest around our future regeneration plans.
“These are exciting times for Bradford. Investors are seeing the growing business[2] confidence in our place. “Now all they need is the certainty that the government is equally willing to invest in a much-needed future rail solution for Bradford, to get us on the mainline.
“This latest statement from the Minister is positive, for them to say they are going to alter the Integrated Rail Plan which originally left Bradford out, represents significant progress.
“I’ve been in conversations with the Rail Minister over the last few months and am pleased to see he’s listening.
“We also continue to press for urgent improvements at Forster Square to enable better London connections ready for our City of Culture year and for the necessary improvements at Keighley[3] station to be delivered quickly.
“We look forward to hearing the detail of the government announcement next week.”