Luton Railway Station

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Friday 11th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

It was my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) who last secured a debate on the rebuilding of Luton railway station, some 2,179 days ago. I regret to inform the House that, despite his powers of persuasion, and mine since I was elected to this place, progress on the rebuild, which the Government, the council and the operator all agree needs to go ahead, has not advanced in that period at all, and in some areas it has gone backward.

That is despite the fact that Luton is easily in the top decile of stations, in terms of passenger numbers, and is growing rapidly, serving an urban conurbation in excess of a quarter of a million people. My constituents and I daily experience the frustration of this old, tired and inaccessible station. As a result of how it is situated, even non-passengers are disadvantaged by its presence and current state. It effectively cuts off the town centre to pedestrians with mobility issues coming from the vast majority of the town to the north.

My constituents pay some of the highest ticket prices in the south-east, but virtually none of that is reinvested in our station. Residents have to put up with a total lack of disabled facilities for getting down to the platforms, and those passing between High Town and South wards cannot travel either way with their pushchairs or heavy baggage on the regular stretches where the station’s single lift is inoperable, even if they are not seeking to access the station in the first place. Frustratingly, we have been close to securing the requisite funding on multiple occasions, only for our hopes to be dashed. I seek the Minister’s assurance today that the rebuild project is a priority for her Department and, if so, that it can proceed in this control period.

Built in 1868 on the midland main line, Luton station expanded in a piecemeal manner in the 1930s and the 1960s to serve a growing town. It was key to the expansion of my home town, serving the town’s gas works, power station and industries such as hat making and, later, car making. However, over the last century, Luton’s proximity to London has led to a massive growth in commuter traffic. We are just 22 minutes from St Pancras by direct train, and we link directly to towns such as Nottingham, Derby, Sheffield and Brighton, to name but a few. In short, Luton is a major railway station that is key to the south-east network and to our town’s prosperity.

However, the station also serves as the gateway to our borough and, as such, first appearances matter. If the Minister were to make the short journey up to Luton today, she would be greeted by runs of heavy glass windows that have been boarded up because they have a tendency to fall out on to the tracks and, potentially, on to passengers below. If it were raining, she might see the ingeniously named platform 3 “water feature”, which cascades down from the bridge above. As she exited our inadequate ticket gates and took the overcrowded stairs heaving her ministerial boxes, she would have to hope that the station’s lift was working—this week, by the way, it is not. My constituents report that the station is inconvenient, grubby, unwelcoming and embarrassing. We are proud of our town, but not of our railway station.

Since the 1990s, a number of abortive schemes have sought to rectify the situation. Luton Borough Council has invested heavily in the station quarter, with improved links to Dunstable and the airport through the landmark guided busway, giving access to education and employment opportunities to the east and west. Local businesses and charities have bought and restored the old hat factories that sprung up in the 1800s around the station, and the area is a hub of activity and young, creative businesses, with many people wanting to start their entrepreneurial careers there. The business improvement district and The Mall have improved access to the town centre and its appearance, and the town’s single further education college intends to relocate to a new build just metres from the station. The new Network Rail-built car park is an iconic building and a statement of investment in the town. In short, the area has been transformed and befits a town of the size and status of ours.

However, just as the surrounding context has improved, the station itself has gone backwards. The net effect of the £6 billion Thameslink programme investment in Luton station and the surrounding area, which I welcome, has actually been to further diminish the facility’s accessibility—that surely cannot have been the aim of the programme—because 12-car running has cut off access for those with mobility problems.

The 2009 better stations programme identified Luton as one of the 10 worst stations in the country and gave the project sponsors access to a £50 million fund intended to improve category B railway stations. To unlock the potential of the scheme, that funding was to be provided alongside contributions from the local authority and the then operator—First Capital Connect—as well as Access for All funding. However, on the election of the coalition Government in 2010, the money was pulled, without a plan to proceed. Despite my best efforts and those of the local authority, the project stalled, and it has not advanced since.

Let me turn to the present situation. In April 2014, the Government announced that Luton was one of 42 stations that would be authorised to access about £100 million of Access for All funding. That was for the control period 5 delivery plan, which runs from 2014 to 2019. Access for All funding is key to advancing the project. In stark terms, there are two options available: either we use the funding to deliver a stand-alone footbridge, disconnected from the station, but seemingly offering better accessibility; or we use it to leverage in funding for a larger redevelopment.

The first option is a non-starter. If the footbridge were disconnected from the railway station, it would offer greater accessibility to only a small number of my constituents. It would not link to the station’s car park, in which there has already been significant investment, or to the ticket office or the retail sites. Once used, the funding could not be used to leverage in further funding from other available sources.

Assurances from Network Rail, the station redevelopment sponsor, that that could be the first phase of a multi-phase development spanning the control period—that is what Network Rail has advocated to me recently—are politically naïve. Once the legal requirements were fulfilled, the moral imperative for greater, more positive improvements to the station would be quietly sidelined and dropped.

Therefore, the second option—that of a comprehensive scheme made up of funding from the station commercial project facility, the national stations improvement programme, Access for All, the Thameslink operator, local government and commercial funds—is vastly superior and appropriate for our needs. That is the route by which we would seek to deliver the approximately £20 million required for a perfectly adequate scheme.

The dilemma is that either we spend the Access for All funding, which would meet a legal requirement and would be delivered in this control period, or we delay the project in the hope of securing additional Department for Transport funding for an adequate scheme, which would cost time and delay delivery. The Access for All scheme, together with funding from other sources, is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get this job done.

There is, of course, a third option, namely that the Department demonstrates that this is a priority scheme and signals that a masterplan should be agreed for the delivery of improvements starting before the end of this control period in 2019. The Minister has the power to make that happen, and I ask her to do it.

Having worked actively on the issue in recent months, alongside my local authority colleagues, I am pleased to say that Network Rail has accepted that we will not accept a stand-alone footbridge project and is now working with Luton Borough Council to create a masterplan. It will incorporate some of the elements of the previous options, but it will seek more straightforward ways to deliver the benefits. The local authority has been generous in authorising the early release of funds to enable that, and Network Rail has provided match funding. The council recognises that the improvement of the station is complex. There are constraints on public finances and it will involve the pulling together of a number of different pots of funding, but this really is the only way forward.

Last month, the Secretary of State for Transport wrote in a letter to Luton Borough Council:

“I agree with you that the condition of the station needs to be addressed and that investment is needed to bring it up to the standard Luton residents have every right to expect.”

With that in mind, I ask the Minister to consider a few points. First, will she ensure that, in the forthcoming Budget, the Chancellor understands the depth of feeling among my constituents and takes the first step towards the delivery of a new masterplan by approving Govia’s £2.5 million bid for station commercial project facility funding? That is a vital part of the various pots of funding that will need to be assembled, and it will ensure the political viability of such an approach.

Secondly, will the Minister instruct her officials to create a publicly transparent timescale and work programme for the project, and ensure that it is given prioritisation by both Network Rail and the Department for Transport, with a named lead officer at the Department?

Thirdly, will she take this opportunity to make it clear that a footbridge-only or footbridge-first scheme is unacceptable? It would reduce mobility for some and permanently exclude it for others. Will she instruct Network Rail to drop that idea forever and instead work to expedite progress on the masterplan with Luton Borough Council?

Fourthly, and finally, will the Minister give an assurance that she will do all in her power to ensure that a comprehensive project starts in control period 5, with shovels in the ground before the end of that control period in 2019? It would be understandable if a project of such a size and scale sought to span control periods, but it would be unacceptable for my residents and businesses, who have shown great forbearance in recent years, to continue to suffer from the state of the station through to the mid-2020s at least.

Last year, 100,000 more passengers entered and exited Luton station than in the preceding year. We are a growing town, and we need adequate facilities. We need this Government to do the right thing, as I hope the Minister wants to do, by the people of Luton.