Wadhurst Parish Council

Kent RUS

Report on Meeting in Eastbourne on 27th November, 2009

            Bob Tidy, Bob Standley and I (amongst others) attended this meeting.

            The meeting had been convened by ESCC to discuss the Kent and Sussex RUSs and a representative of most parishes had been invited although only some 20 were represented.  There were several representatives from Network Rail and a good few County Councillors; all the MPs had been invited but only Waterson turned up (for a short while) and Greg Barker and Norman Baker had accepted but did not show up.  Charles Hendry had told me the previous week that he could not make it.  No-one came from DfT, with whom ESCC had hoped there would be a dialogue.

            There were several presentations and Q&A sessions before we went into “break-out” groups to try to prioritise the County’s needs from the railways as a whole.

            The outcome was that the agreed first priority was the reinstatement of Cannon Street services (coupled in people’s minds, but not explicitly, with improved electrification of the Hastings line to accommodate twelve-car trains – as the TW sidings will have Thameslink trains in fixed twelve-car units, they cannot come South and Hastings trains will not be able to shed four coaches there), second was the improvement of the Marshlink line between Ashford and Hastings (double-tracking and electrification ideally, but reinstalling passing places as a minimum), next was that more trains should stop at the small rural stations (eg Cooksbridge and Plumpton) so that they can be used more, to and from school for example.  After that there were one or two unfulfillable dreams such as reinstating the Willingdon Chord behind Eastbourne.

Network Rail had told us earlier that by far the largest number of comments they received during the consultation process was protests about the loss of the service to Cannon Street, and that the outcome of the meeting would not affect the current proposals (the Cannon Street service would not be reinstated) but would be borne in mind by the TOCs (train operating companies) when they did their detailed planning within the restrictions of their franchises.  This confession caused consternation but the mood of the meeting continued to be genial and co-operative.  We were told that the main parts of the proposals were political, imposed upon Network Rail by DfT, and that the only way to get them altered therefore was by political lobbying.  This made the absence of MPs particularly galling but ESCC is going to move in on them in a big way and persuade them to lobby hard.

            In private discussion afterwards, I was told frankly by the Network Rail representatives that not only had the proposals been imposed upon them by the government, but that they disagreed with a lot of them; they are in effect as frustrated as us.  The only vestige of good news was that they sympathise with us about Cannon Street and will do their best to ensure that all Charing Cross trains call at London Bridge, and that there is a good shuttle service from there to Cannon Street – every four minutes, she suggested.

This will of course be fine in the mornings but will probably ensure that it is standing room only in the eight-car trains in the evening.

ESCC will be circulating the minutes of the meeting, and calling a follow-up meeting in due course.

I now appreciate the statement in the reply I received from Geoff Appleby at the DfT in answer to my letter that “I have to say that a key feature of the Thameslink proposals is ….. a reduction in the total number of trains routed to/from Cannon Street.”  This in effect confirms that the Dft are bent on running many more Thameslink services simply because they can, even to the detriment of existing services and even though there is no evidence of demand for them.

John Phipson
2.12.09