England’s Economic Heartland – A curates egg!

England’s Economic Heartland – A curates egg!

http://www.englandseconomicheartland.com/Pages/home.aspx

The England’s Economic Heartland (EEH) is a consortium of Councils and quangos which arcs the East-West Corridor and Northamptonshire and brings road, rail and other interests. An umbrella of councils to shield them from risk and liability or a conglomerate of interests thinking more power from many pushing for or against than individual units can muster. However, it seems on the transport front to be with little overall vision or strategy or accountability to the electorate. Vote for someone in Oundle, which lost its railway in the mid 1960’s and you find your local representative is on the County Council, the County Councils Network, South Midland Local Enterprise Partnership (SEMLEP) and Strategic Transport Forum Chairperson. Cllr Heather Smith commands a wide gambit of position and power but for what purpose? Is anyone proposing reopening Northampton-Peterborough railway? No. Is anyone supporting rebuilding Northampton-Bedford railway? No. Is anyone supporting Light Rail linking Rushden, Irchester, Irthlingborough and Wellingborough? No. So that is a considerable population with no new rail infrastructure. Likewise, the EEH supports Oxford-Cambridge East-West Rail, but also a monstrous East-West Highway (new) along the same geographic corridor, north or south or criss-crossing the railway. Other roads will feel the weight of development growth and cases likely to be made for other highways spend, but no new rail other than East-West Rail. There’s no station for 20 miles north of Bedford, so all new growth for 20 miles north of Bedford will bring commuter traffic to our station for London. We can’t reopen local rail links due to blockages, but we can do more roads whatever the cost. That is grossly unfair and the whole £’s sign of approach the EEH seems to present, indicates commodification of the area and people fit in with it rather than it tailors to people and what they want. Their hands are tied thanks to the legacy of local rail closures, locking in road consumption and pattern demand. However, that chicken and egg of demand and supply trend, ignores the land use allocation balance of scenarios like if we have a hard Brexit, land will be required for food more than before – home grown etc; but who owns the land, if we develop the countryside or split it up to ever smaller units and tracts surely, we undermine the objective, organic and non-intensive farming which we need for food and healthy eating? Some are complacent whereby they hold more than 3 strands of grass up and say “look! We have grass!” (plural) but whether it can sustain 75 million population by 2030 remains to be seen. If prices rise then wages frozen or lower incomes brackets will be priced out of the market locking in Food Bank syndrome. Again, our balance of trade deficit means that inflation is locked in unless we can re-rail the regions, get freight back on rail which in turn speeds bulk transit times and keeps costs down. Endless juggernauts plying the A14 or M1 in congestion laden corridors is wasteful of time, fuel and road space. Who or what will blink first? EEH has no real answer to this, it is tinkering at the edges and for 5, 735 people voting in Oundle, that is a lot of power and hardly represents the whole area. We should have local referendums on the switch from road to rail and lists of rail schemes and then charge quangos or councils to deliver. That we find we need EEH shows LEP’s have largely failed to deliver and whilst Parishes look after their own, it is locally elected councils which face the squeeze on government funding. In short more quangos give high flying jobs for more people, but actual service and service delivery is scant to say the least. We still need a Tsar for Rail, as many fragments speak akin to parish councils for their own patches, rather than the coordination of a regional and national network. Meanwhile what role Westminster? On the one hand the Government came in with Eric Pickles saying he would reduce quangos, but now it finds it useful to create new ones, as it shares and farms out responsibility, accountability, risk and makes news rather than tangibly and specifically delivers.

The question is what makes for change? Can change be brought about and what role the public at large other than to give comment at consultations to help bureaucrats refine their proposals and achieve their goals and be ever thus rewarded for it – but we return to our basis of operations – the foundations upon which the design of what changes are needed predicated on a roads agenda, rather than seeing the rail gaps, addressing them first and then if they don’t deliver seeing what else needs to be done. Alas.