Aldridge-Brownhills is a unique constituency for many reasons, and one of those is that it is in an elite club of only forty-nine UK Parliamentary Constituencies out of six hundred and fifty not to have a passenger train station.
Like in so many areas we lost our station in Aldridge due to the 1960’s Beeching cuts.
The last passenger train left Aldridge in 1965 and whilst to this day we still have a freight line we do not have passenger services.
All of that began to change in 2017. Following the first West Midlands Mayoral election and the establishment of the West Midlands Combined Authority under Andy Street’s leadership a bold and ambitious transport plan was laid down for the region up until 2040 and as part of that was the ambition to bring back a train station to Aldridge.
Throughout the intervening period a huge amount of work was undertaken by the West Midlands Combined Authority and Transport for the West Midlands, but the game changer came in February 2021 when Andy Street on behalf of the Combined Authority purchased land from the NHS for car parking as a clear demonstration of intent to reopen a station in Aldridge.
By June 2022 The Strategic Outline Business Case for the scheme was assessed and given Ministerial approval by the Department for Transport and further funding was provided from the Restoring Your Railway programme.
Indeed, the Outline Business Case demonstrated that the proposal to reopen a station in Aldridge presented the potential to improve connectivity for the residents of Aldridge, reduce existing congestion providing a more convenient public transport route with greater access to job opportunities. Demand modelling for the proposed station showed that there was the potential for 237,000 passenger journeys per year and it would help reduce pressure at existing stations nearby.
Then on the 20th February of this year the green light for the project was given.
The budget of £30 million was secured from the Government. Transport for West Midlands and the West Midlands Rail Executive were working with Network Rail to get the station built and open with a project end date of 2027.
The plan for new passenger services from Aldridge Station would initially offer a half-hourly service to Walsall town centre where passengers would be offered an easy interchange with services to Birmingham as well as the opportunity to connect to wider regional and national services.
However, at the same time as giving the official go ahead to the new station in February of this year the then Mayor of the West Midlands was also able to announce that there were also active discussions about the possibility that if the open access request was given for services between Euston and Wrexham, then the Shropshire and Midland Railway Company could also provide services from the new station at Aldridge directly to London five times per day.
Whilst the Mayoral election resulted in a new Mayor being elected we were given initial assurances that having secured the funding through the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement the station was still on track.
Then in July the project hit the buffers. The new Mayor suddenly announced a review into three transport projects; one of which was our station on the grounds it was not fully funded. Indeed Arup, as his independent consultants, as part of their examination of the scheme were told there was only a budget of £3.6 million for a project that would cost £30 million. It begged the question where had the remaining £26.4 million gone?
After months of enquiries and questions the former Secretary of State for Transport wrote to me (under duress) at the end of November to outline that having received an application from the Mayor of the West Midlands she had agreed to move Aldridge’s funding towards other projects.
It was therefore little surprise that Arup were under the impression it wasn’t a fully funded project.
In Westminster Hall last week whilst raising this matter again, the Transport Minister was forced to advise me that not one penny of the money allocated to Aldridge Station will be used for transport projects in our Borough.
The Mayor’s decision has rightly angered the local community and left a sense of bewilderment on why having come so far in the process the funding was pulled in this manner. Indeed up until as recently as Sunday 15th December on Politics Midlands the Mayor still sought to wrongly protest that it was an unfunded project.
I believe if you take political decisions then you have to own your political decisions. It’s time for the Mayor to come clean with the residents of Aldridge on why he chose to move this funding from Aldridge. For my part the fight to ensure we have a train station in Aldridge goes on.
West Midlands Mayor should come clean over why he cut funding to Aldridge Station project
