Transport: Marston Vale

Debate between Blake Stephenson and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 17th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered transport requirements in the Marston Vale.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I hope this can be a constructive debate. I am not here to bash the Government or to stand in the way of progress; I am here to open a dialogue with the Minister on behalf of the people I serve in Mid Bedfordshire.

The Marston Vale in Mid Bedfordshire contains historical villages such as Cranfield, Marston Moretaine, Lidlington, Stewartby and Brogborough, as well as the new town of Wixams. It also sits at the heart of the Government’s growth agenda. The Universal UK resort will be a £50 billion boost to the UK’s economy, bringing millions of visitors every year to Kempston Hardwick. East West Rail, connecting the intellectual powerhouses of Oxford and Cambridge, will run along the Marston Vale line, stopping at Ridgmont, Lidlington and Stewartby. The merger of Cranfield University with King’s College London will bring further world-class research to the Marston Vale.

The Marston Valley development will see 5,000 houses delivered across new villages between Marston Moretaine and Brogborough, and the Stewartby brickworks development will see 1,000 houses delivered on a brownfield site in Stewartby. The new town of Wixams will continue to be built out over the coming years, with thousands more houses and a new train station. The Government’s proposed new town at Milton Keynes and potential developments at Keepers Place and the Aspley Guise triangle could see tens of thousands more houses built in and around the Marston Vale.

All in, the roughly 7.5 miles between junction 13 of the M1 and the town of Kempston will soon see two nationally significant infrastructure projects, thousands of new homes and one of the UK’s leading universities, all at the centre of the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor. That is on top of existing significant sites including the Millbrook proving ground, the community forest of Marston Vale and the Woburn Forest Center Parcs.

As I said, I am not here to stand in the way of the growth that our area is set to contribute to the UK. If it is done right, there are immense opportunities for the Marston Vale, with thousands of new jobs, brilliant new transport links and new communities in our area.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. I very well understand the absolute devastation caused by bad management. As I said to him beforehand, I have similar problems in my constituency in relation to the Ballynahinch bypass. We must have robust Government involvement in prioritising infrastructure, and it must be managed, wherever it may be. We cannot have a piecemeal system; we must have central Government pushing it. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that is the clear way forward?

[Blake Stephenson]

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. With the scale of the change that we are discussing, particularly in my constituency and also in his, it is vital that the proposals are done with, not done to, the residents of the Marston Vale and Strangford, in order to retain public support.

That means proper planning on transport infrastructure that considers the cumulative impact of these nationally significant projects on the local communities they will sit within. At the moment, I am afraid that is not happening, and public support is slipping away. Transport modelling for the various projects has been siloed and has failed to properly take into account the cumulative impact of proposals. For example, outline planning permission for the 5,000 houses at Marston Valley was granted on the basis of transport modelling that does not consider the impact of Universal UK, and Universal UK’s transport modelling does not consider the impact of the 5,000 houses at Marston Valley.

East West Rail’s proposals will increase capacity to serve Universal, but they fail to properly plan for the impact that they will have on the local road infrastructure by severing local communities. For example, to increase the number of trains on the line in response to Universal UK, East West Rail plans to close a number of level crossings in the Marston Vale and leave others with significant downtime throughout the day. That will have an enormous impact on local communities, effectively bisecting the Marston Vale along the rail line.

One of the level crossings that East West Rail has proposed to close, at Station Lane in Millbrook, is a key local route for the Marston Valley development. It is also a vital link for the Millbrook proving ground, including for the transport of military vehicles. The alternative route would direct enormous volumes of traffic down country lanes even with today’s level of demand, but we are adding thousands more houses and Europe’s biggest theme park. Roads such as Bury Ware in Lidlington are simply not equipped to cope with the volumes of traffic they are expecting.

Previous East West Rail proposals have broad local support, but the new proposals, which fail to plan for the cumulative impact of transport pressures in the Marston Vale, now risk eroding that. I urge the Minister to work with East West Rail to reconsider the impacts of its proposals on level crossings in the Marston Vale, in the light of the cumulative development impacts. We cannot allow it to irreparably damage our communities and turn our country lanes into gridlocked rat runs.

Plans to deliver a new multi-storey car park in Lidlington have also caused concern that the village could end up as a park and ride for Universal UK, just one stop up the line on East West Rail. That is not nimbyism; it reflects a real local concern that good intentions alone are not plans. We cannot prevent people from parking in Lidlington and hopping on the train to Universal, but we can alleviate residents’ concerns and reduce the risk of it happening by properly planning for and delivering a park and ride elsewhere.

The new Ridgmont station just off the M1 is a prime candidate for such a park and ride, but that station’s delivery has been predicated on house building that does not yet have planning permission and is not yet included in any local plans. Disjointed planning and concerns about delivery timetables at Ridgmont leave residents in Lidlington and elsewhere fearing the worst.

Another impact of the changing demand for transport in our area is that East West Rail’s plans for Stewartby station are now out of touch with the needs of local residents. Stewartby station is relatively busy. Despite a limited rail service, the station sees around 90,000 passengers a year, almost all of them local and many of them students at Kimberley college, which is located a short walk from the current station. East West Rail’s plans for the station involve removing it from the village entirely and turning it into a gateway station for Universal UK.

To be clear, we absolutely need an East West Rail station to serve Universal UK, but very little work seems to have been done on the implications of the new station location for Stewartby residents and students of Kimberley college. If the plan remains to build a new Universal station and axe the Stewartby station entirely, Ministers need to ensure that East West Rail urgently works to produce a detailed plan for transport links between the station, Stewartby village and Kimberley college.

That plan should include details on how residents with mobility challenges will be able to get to the station, and it should set out the safeguards that Ministers will put in place to ensure that hundreds of students at Kimberley college will be kept safe when using an extremely busy station and making a much longer journey, likely on foot, from the station to the college. The alternative that I have been calling for would be to keep the current Stewartby station operational in addition to a new station serving Universal UK, with a limited stopping service operating only at peak morning and evening times.

More generally, despite a much-publicised announcement on the Government’s infrastructure investment to enable Universal UK earlier this month, neither the Chancellor nor the Transport Secretary has written to me to outline specifically what that investment will deliver in my constituency. Residents in the Marston Vale want and deserve clarity from the Government on what infrastructure, particularly transport infrastructure, will be delivered to facilitate the arrival of millions of visitors to Europe’s biggest tourist attraction in their backyard. I hope the Minister will be able to offer some further detail in her response.

Another good example of transport pressure in our area is junction 13 of the M1, which the Minister knows I am going to mention. The Government have indicated that junction 13 will be upgraded in the early 2030s, for which my constituents are grateful, but the timeframe for upgrades needs to be urgently reviewed. Junction 13 is unsuitable now; it is already acknowledged that it is regularly severely congested. While the Marston Valley development will provide some upgrades to cope with the demand brought by those new houses, it will not consider the volume of additional traffic brought by Universal UK. Junction 13 is a key route for local traffic as well as traffic passing through our community. Given the significant increase in traffic volume, we need that upgrade now.

Junction 13 is not the only significant road infrastructure impacted by local development plans. Vehicle traffic will also use the A421 to get to the Universal UK resort from the M1. The Government have acknowledged this with their investment in slip roads from the A421 to Universal UK, but we have recently seen the significant congestion caused, even with the current levels of demand, when the A421 is closed. In September 2024, there was severe flooding on the road, which saw a dip fill with 72 million litres of water after a pumping station was overwhelmed.

Work has been done to solve that particular vulnerability, but the traffic chaos that occurred in 2024 demonstrates what happens in the Marston Vale when the A421 is out of commission. That congestion would be many times more significant if the A421 had to be shut for any reason after Universal UK is built. Any respectable transport plan for the Marston Vale must address one key question: what is our contingency plan if the A421 is out of action? We have seen no answer to that question.

Junction 13 is not the only project for which timing will be crucial. From the day that the Universal UK resort opens in 2031, millions of visitors will pour through its doors, whether we have built sufficient transport infrastructure or not. But if we have not, they will pour through its doors via gridlocked local roads designed for local traffic, not for the largest theme park in Europe. It is imperative, therefore, that the Marston Vale is home to a national effort to deliver new infrastructure as swiftly as possible. That includes having the new station at Wixams on the midland main line open from day one, it means ensuring that East West Rail between Oxford and Bedford has services running to completed modern stations with step-free access, and it means having a road network, especially junction 13, that can cope with the volume of traffic we are expecting.

As I said, I did not come here to play party politics, to bash Ministers or to rail against the march of progress. I came with a specific request. What we see in the Marston Vale is not unique, but it is unusual: several projects of national significance contained within roughly 7.5 miles of Bedfordshire, split across Central Bedfordshire council and Bedford borough council. The myriad challenges are difficult to address because there is no centralised master planning and, as a result, there is no way to mitigate the cumulative impact of the various individual proposals. That is leading to contradictory solutions.

Because there is no centralised masterplan and no single body overseeing these projects, it is also much more difficult to leverage funding to ensure that it is spent in the right places. I would like Ministers to commit to working with me, local councillors, local residents and key stakeholders, such as Universal and local developer O&H, to develop a master plan for transport in the Marston Vale. That should set out exactly what communities in the Marston Vale need to manage the various pressures on our area. It should include detail about how to manage transport pressures strategically during construction periods, and it should open a conversation about how we secure the right funding to deliver those projects.

The rewards of success are clear: enabling the Marston Vale and its residents to play the fullest part in delivering the Government’s growth agenda, right at the heart of the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor. But the costs of failure are stark: residents in the Marston Vale waking up in the 2030s to discover that they have suffered all of the downsides of growth in their communities, and that some of the benefits for the country as a whole have been squandered.

Planning and Development: Bedfordshire

Debate between Blake Stephenson and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con) [R]]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered planning and development in Bedfordshire.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. Mid Bedfordshire—indeed, all of Bedfordshire —has played its part in delivering new housing. My constituency was once home to the world’s largest brickworks at Stewartby. Our communities bear testament to our brickmaking history, with former clay pits now finding new life as lakes and homes for nature in the Marston Vale forest, and with former industrial sites, including the brickworks at Stewartby and Kempston Hardwick, set to be repurposed as places to deliver the homes and jobs of the future.

In the past month we have also had confirmation of the Luton airport expansion, the announcement of the new Universal UK theme park at Kempston Hardwick in my constituency, and the publication of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. That comes on top of the recent announcement of East West Rail, work being done to develop local plans in all three of our council areas— I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a Central Bedfordshire councillor—and the work of the Government’s new towns taskforce.

In this debate, I hope to highlight the ways in which the planning system can help shape the future of our communities in Bedfordshire, and some of the things that my constituents need assurance on from Government. I want to be clear at the start: I am not a nimby or a blocker, but if the Government are serious about building houses and critical infrastructure, we need to ensure that we do so in a way that is future-proof and resilient.

We need to turn blockers into builders, rather than create a new generation of blockers. In my experience, most of the people whom this Government have labelled as blockers are not ideological obsessives standing in front of the bulldozers of progress; they are people fed up with bad development. They are fed up of developers throwing up housing estates but not building communities, of soulless developments that could be found anywhere, and, most importantly, of developments that worsen quality of life.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Member for securing this debate. He has outlined some of the things being done in his constituency, such as using old industrial buildings for apartments. To add to his knowledge, in Northern Ireland we have been repurposing empty buildings in town centres, such as homes above shops—I said that to the Minister in a question just recently. Does the hon. Member agree that is something else that could be used to restore and build up our town centres while ensuring that we are not encroaching upon rural land, as so often happens across the whole United Kingdom?

[Blake Stephenson]

I absolutely agree. There is a lot of support for brownfield-first development, but also for gently densifying our towns and cities so that we have houses where people want to live within the existing infrastructure.

The Government have been elected with a clear mandate to build, build, build, and I accept that. But I hope that they will do the hard yards to plan, plan, plan, and ensure that the 1.5 million houses that they build are the right houses in the right places, as part of the right communities and with the right infrastructure. It is in that spirit that I bring forward this debate, because Bedfordshire is not a place that is standing still.

I congratulate the Government on completing the negotiations, begun by the previous Government, to secure the new Universal UK theme park at Kempston Hardwick. That will be a game changer for our local economy, and I will continue to support the Government, Universal and our councils as it progresses through the planning system, but to maximise its potential, it will be important to get the infrastructure right. That means we need to plan for the planes, trains, automobiles and accommodation. Through the planning system, we need to see work done to deliver the right accommodation that will be available in Bedfordshire for people to come and stay, hopefully to enjoy Universal and then stay a while in our towns and villages, spending their time and money enjoying everything that Bedfordshire has to offer.

As I noted earlier, I understand that Government have a mandate to “just get on and build”. I have some sympathy for their frustration with Members of Parliament like me who they see as trying to put the brakes on that ambition, but I hope the Minister will recognise that that is not my intention. I believe as fervently as he does that we need to deliver new homes for young people growing up right across Britain, but I believe we must do so in a way that is sensitive to our countryside and our communities, and that delivers the right homes in the right places with the right infrastructure.

The current planning system is not working for anyone. Too often, it blocks good development and allows bad development—development that erodes local character, that builds houses but divides communities, and that comes without the right infrastructure, leaving new residents and old alike frustrated and unwilling to accept the further houses the Government want to deliver in their communities. As this Government’s planning reforms progress, I hope they will take time to consider how the planning system can more effectively protect the character of our towns and villages, and how it can seek to disarm those blockers that the Government are concerned about by addressing the things they are concerned about, not by tying their arms behind their backs. That is a harder job, I accept, but is anything that is worth doing in politics easy?

In Bedfordshire, I would like to see the Government give us the tools through the planning system to protect everything that makes our communities such special places to live—protections for our historic character and our villages, protections for our beautiful and unique countryside against unending and unplanned urban sprawl, and protections for the great British pub; indeed, I would like to see more of them built as our communities expand.

In Mid Bedfordshire, we have always done the right thing and taken our fair share of housing—we have even taken Luton’s surplus housing need. We have done everything we were supposed to do, but our communities suffer the effects of bad development. Still, residents in Maulden see development crawling even further up the slope of the Greensand ridge, as their flood risk steadily worsens. Still, residents in Wixams find themselves fighting for a GP surgery that no one locally seems keen to take ownership of. Still, residents find themselves fighting developers who are keen to pocket the profits of development but less keen to deliver on their promises of well-maintained green spaces, proper flood protections and local amenities.

Thameslink Train Services

Debate between Blake Stephenson and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 25th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Blake Stephenson]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I thank him for joining this important debate for the communities across Bedfordshire that rely heavily on rail services for leisure and work. The disruption is also having a huge impact on our economy; I will come to that later in my speech.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Blake Stephenson]

Very briefly—it is only a half-hour debate.

[Jim Shannon]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for the work he has done for disabled people who use trains regularly. That should be happening everywhere in this great United Kingdom. Does he agree that disabled people—those who are in wheelchairs, and those who have mobility or vision issues—deserve the same quality of service no matter where they are in this United Kingdom?

Flooding: Bedfordshire

Debate between Blake Stephenson and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Blake Stephenson]

I absolutely agree. I would love to join any of those meetings with Mayor Tom to support those efforts in my wards of Wixams and Wootton.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman, to whom I spoke beforehand, for securing the debate. A conversation that people sometimes have is about the co-ordination between different departments, as the hon. Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) alluded to. If the flooding of roads and housing development areas is known about in advance, could better co-ordination improve things for our constituents? For many people, it might simply be about having a sandbag available. People need to know those things; maybe that would help.

[Blake Stephenson]

Certainly, one of the lessons that I have learned from the flooding in Mid Bedfordshire is that many statutory bodies are involved in flooding response and resilience. We need to work harder to ensure that those organisations work together. It is so important that the Government, local authorities and others learn the right lessons from those floods, and I hope that this debate can play a role in guiding that conversation.

First, let me reflect on the direct impact on constituents in Mid Bedfordshire. Hundreds of residents have taken the time to describe for me the huge losses that they have suffered, and I thank them for taking the time to do so while trying to recover from flood damage. Emma from Marston Moretaine, who filled in my recent flooding survey, told me:

“Our property was completely soaked front and back. We saw water rise, and beside the path at our house there was gushing water! We had to call for help. Water came in through the sides and foundations, and in the end there was nothing we could do.”

Caroline from Flitwick also took the time to share her experience:

“Severe flooding of my property requiring full water removal from my home and severe repairs. I am currently staying with family but having to relocate for a minimum of 6 months whilst repairs are done.”

Rita from Harlington explained that

“We had internal flooding start at 9.30 am with sewerage coming up from a manhole cover inside our garage. We contacted Anglian water by 10 am. We couldn’t shower or flush the toilet as it was gurgling back up! Then the rains came—the front drive was a deluge. We had neighbours helping with buckets and pumps trying to get the water off our property. It was a fighting battle—the water reached the front door and came into the property.”

Being flooded is not just an inconvenience: it is expensive, and it is heartbreaking for families to see their valuables—some of them irreplaceable—washed away. Shortly after the flooding, I took the time to visit dozens of local businesses, including Disco-licious in Gravenhurst, Maulden Garden Centre and The Dog House day care centre, which is also in Maulden. Those businesses, together with many others, have experienced severe financial losses, and in some cases have seen many years of hard work and investment washed away before their eyes.

Our farmers have been some of the worst hit, with severe and significant flooding reported at several local farms, including at Moreteyne’s Retreat, a smallholding that has been impacted hugely by floodwaters flowing from the A421. In the aftermath of that flooding, I have learned that 74% of the UK’s floodplain is agricultural land. Flooding can destroy whole crop yields, wasting months of work and threatening the livelihoods of our farmers, in many cases at the same time as they see their homes devastated by floodwaters.