The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) on securing the debate on disabled access at Kidsgrove station. I am delighted to be covering this role tonight in the House and, like my predecessor, I am committed to ensuring accessibility. In recent years, expectations about accessibility have rightly changed, both among disabled passengers and the railway industry, and that is even more the case after the success of our transport networks in providing accessible journeys during last year’s Olympics and Paralympics.
Unfortunately, as the hon. Lady recognised when she gave the history of Kidsgrove station, many of our railway stations date from Victorian times, including Kidsgrove, which first opened in 1848. These 19th century stations were not built with the needs of 21st century passengers in mind, and that has left us with a huge task in ensuring that the expectations of disabled passengers are met by opening up the rail network to them.
Clearly, accessible stations make a huge difference to people’s journey experience, not only for people with reduced mobility, but also for those carrying heavy luggage or pushing unwieldy pushchairs. I am grateful that the hon. Lady acknowledged that we remain committed to making further improvements in this area and have continued to support, and indeed expand, the Access for All programme, launched in 2006 by the previous Government. The programme was worth £370 million in 2004-05 prices, and will deliver accessible routes at more than 150 stations.
To demonstrate value for money to the Treasury and the Office of Rail Regulation, I am happy to confirm that the funding has been targeted at the busiest stations. By using a weighting mechanism that allowed us to look at stations’ footfall figures overlaid with census data on disability, we have tried to ensure that as many disabled people as possible can benefit from funding. Approximately a third of the stations were chosen to ensure a fair geographical spread across the country. We took into account the views of train operators and the proximity to facilities such as hospitals, schools for disabled children and military rehabilitation centres—factors that the hon. Lady raised in her speech.
One hundred and five projects are now complete and we expect the rest of the programme to be substantially complete by April next year, a full year ahead of the initial plans. If we look at the scale of the work and what it has done for the ability to open up accessibility for disabled people, there are some significant engineering projects: Clapham Junction, the busiest station in Europe, is now completely accessible for the first time in its 150 year history. We should not be complacent, however.
The hon. Lady is right to say that last year’s high-level output statement included a further £100 million to extend the Access for All programme to 2019. I hear what she says about the process being opaque. I will touch on this in more depth in a moment, but I think it is relatively well known that it is for local delivery groups—Network Rail and the train operating companies—to liaise with local authorities in making nominations. We have asked the rail industry to nominate stations for inclusion in the new £100 million programme. I recognise the efforts made by the hon. Lady, and both Network Rail and East Midlands Trains are undoubtedly aware of the desire of the local population for Kidsgrove station to be a top priority. I note her comment that East Midlands Trains has confirmed to her today that it regards Kidsgrove as its top priority. I am sure that will help in the nomination process.
The industry has a number of local delivery groups across the country that were set up to administer the national stations improvement programme in control period 4, which is just about to end. We have asked them to expand their role and nominate stations for the Access for All programme, which has been extended with an extra £100 million. Each group contains representatives from train operating companies and Network Rail. While we continue to believe that the busiest stations remain the priority, we also believe that there should be a fair distribution of investment across the country.
I listened to the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) concerning Sandbach station. I recognise that there is a problem, with flat access to only one platform. If the only place one can travel to is Crewe, wonderful though it may be, that is rather a limiting experience.
We want the industry to take into account other factors, such as improving inter-urban journeys. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North mentioned the availability of third party match funding, which can be used to weight business cases for individual station projects. I am happy to extend to her the meeting she requested, and she is welcome to come to the Department to discuss match funding possibilities for Kidsgrove, which will help us to speed up delivery. I would expect local authorities to take that into account in their submissions to local delivery groups, and I would also expect the views of local authorities to be taken into account by those local delivery groups when they make their nominations.
Joan Walley
Will the Minister tell us how the process will work? Who will submit the bid: local delivery groups, operating companies or local authorities?
Stephen Hammond
The local delivery group is a combination of Network Rail and the operators within the region, and it is for the local delivery group to make that submission and that nomination. The industry has been asked to complete the nomination process for extended Access for All by 15 November. The Department is receiving nominations as we speak, and the process will be open, as I say, until 15 November. Once we have received them, officials at the Department will analyse all the nominations before a final decision is taken on which stations will receive funding. I hope to be able to announce the successful bidding round, starting at the beginning of the next control period, by April next year.
After the hon. Lady’s comments tonight, I am certainly aware of the access issues at Kidsgrove station—and, indeed, at Sandbach—but I also know that there are many other stations across the network that have seen passenger numbers rising. The impressive increase in footfall at Kidsgrove, seen in the figures verified by the Office of Rail Regulation, will undoubtedly form part of the case made by the local delivery group when it makes its nomination.
I will certainly welcome a nomination from Kidsgrove. I want to put on record the fact that the Department will welcome nominations from as many stations as possible. As the hon. Lady will understand, although I would welcome her nomination, I cannot guarantee that any particular station will necessarily be funded or included in the programme once it has been nominated. What I can guarantee is that it will be considered carefully, along with the nominations of all the other inaccessible stations across the country.
Access for All is clearly an important part of the funding, but it is also important to remember that improved access could be achieved by using relatively small amounts of funding, combined with some innovative thinking by the industry. That would be particularly important if Kidsgrove’s application were to prove unsuccessful, when the hon. Lady might like to consider some of the alternatives I am about to mention. There is an annual small schemes fund of around £7 million a year. It is allocated between the train operating companies and is based on the number of stations they manage and how busy those stations are. Since 2006, more than £100 million of investment, including contributions from the train operators and local authorities, has seen projects delivered at almost 1,100 of the country’s 2,500 stations. A variety of projects have been supported under the small schemes, including better provision of accessible toilets, customer information services, blue badge parking spaces and features such as induction loops at ticket offices.
Joan Walley
Will the Minister acknowledge that using small scheme funding for Kidsgrove will not really work? It is at a junction and two lines come through it, and which was constructed in such a way that it has overhead cables, it greatly puts up the potential costs, probably beyond what would be admissible under the small schemes funds. It will have to come out of Access for All funding.
Stephen Hammond
I hear what the hon. Lady says. I looked at the diagram of Kidsgrove station so I am aware of her point. None the less, I think that there might be some possibilities under the small schemes, and I would not wish to rule them out. I hope I am outlining some other possibilities to her.
The hon. Lady will also be aware that in 2011 we released £37.5 million of Access for All mid-tier funding to help projects needing a slightly greater amount of support—up to £1 million. A total of 42 such projects have so far been successful. A number of stations considered the issue the hon. Lady mentioned about students at the local college. The lifts at Alton station, for example, which benefited Treloar college for the physically disabled, came into being through this mid-tier funding.
Access for All funding has clearly been a huge success, but I do not want to give the impression that it is all that we are doing because Access for All is over and above the work being done through major investments being delivered by train operators. They are required to invest an average of £250,000 a year under their minor works programmes on improving stations. Most of that is exclusively spent on access improvements. Each operator is also required to have a disabled people’s protection policy in place as part of their licence to operate services.
It is important to understand that Access for All is key. I will look forward to and welcome the nomination, but much else is going on. We are working with the industry to ensure that we have much wider access for—