Stoke-Leek Line: Reopening

Jack Brereton Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) on securing this excellent debate. I also welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) to her first time responding on behalf of the Government. I thank Ministers and the Department for Transport for the support they have given so far. The Restoring Your Railways Fund has been a model of excellence and innovation, about which the Government should be incredibly proud. Ministers and civil servants across Government should pay great heed to it in developing future similar schemes.

There is a clear need for reopening the Stoke-Leek line. Our roads are full and one in three households in Stoke-on-Trent has no access to a car; in some wards, it is as high as 40%. For access to skills and jobs, this severely limits aspirations and opportunities. The situation is made worse by the fact that our bus services have declined by around a third in the last decade. Congestion and air pollution have only become worse.

Additionally, there are no direct bus links between Leek and Stoke station, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands described, nor do they directly serve Fenton. Operators have said that the main reasons for bus decline are the challenges faced by running a reliable service, given how congested some of our roads are. In many cases, they now run fewer services during peak hours than during the rest of the day, because they just get stuck in the congestion.

Our roads are operating well above capacity and where others may have seen recent improvements, with more people working from home, our local manufacturing, distribution and retail industries mean congestion is almost back to normal levels. Victoria Road in Fenton Manor is notorious for sitting traffic and it is under ministerial directions to improve on the significant breaches of air quality limits, including nitrogen dioxide levels. I fully support the city council in its efforts to address that; a proposal was submitted recently to Ministers.

Better public transport will also be a key part of this. Fenton once had two stations: Fenton Manor was lost in 1956 and Fenton station on the Crewe-Derby line closed in 1961. Those were the bad old days of the north Staffordshire railways decline, exacerbated by industrial decline. Where many parts of the country have seen local stations and lines return since that axe fell, there is a great chasm in north Staffordshire where nothing has reopened. In fact, it got worse with the west coast upgrade, with services removed from Wedgwood and Barlaston, and Etruria closed entirely to shave off just a few minutes. I am pleased to support my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon) in her bid to reopen Etruria station.

Improving our local public transport, both rail and bus, is absolutely vital. New employment and housing growth cannot be accommodated within the constraints of current car-focused networks. We are one of the fastest growing cities: housing development numbers are way above target, with more than the average London borough, and 99% are on brownfield land.

Stoke-on-Trent is on the up and the reindustrialisation of the local economy over the last decade needs an efficient and comprehensive transport network. That includes options for rail. Reopening the Stoke-Leek line would not be happening in a vacuum. Work is under way to deliver on the Transforming Cities Fund, improving local bus flows, revitalising Longton station and creating a transport hub, with Stoke station connected by a dedicated last-mile bus corridor through the city centre.

The reopening of Meir station, east of Longton, which was lost under the Beeching Act—something that I have championed—is an advanced project under the Restoring Your Railways Fund. We are actively seeking to reopen a station, also lost under Beeching, to serve Trentham. By delivering all these priorities, we can build that critical rail mass for north Staffordshire to make public transport a much more viable option, particularly with the development of integrated ticketing.

Employers, educators and providers right along the line all support the benefits that would come through reopening the line, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands suggested. A station at Fenton Manor would be vital to serve many of my constituents. St Peter’s Academy and the main Fenton Manor sports complex would be directly served by a station at Fenton Manor. Fenton Park would also be within easy walking distance. Most importantly, increased numbers of Fenton residents would have easy access to rail, opening up employment, education and leisure opportunities, including the Moorlands countryside, as my right hon. Friend eloquently described.

Equally, this would plug a whole number of communities along the line directly into proposed High Speed 2 services feeding Stoke station and beyond. Public transport journeys between Fenton Manor and Leek would plummet from 55 minutes to around 18 minutes, and fall from 20 minutes to just three minutes between Fenton Manor and Stoke station. Properly integrated with the bus network, with funding that we also hope to secure through the Bus Back Better Fund, journey time savings from reopening the line could be felt much more widely across the whole of north Staffordshire. It could halve public transport journeys across my constituency alone. Only through enhancing public transport will we fully realise the benefits of HS2. The alternative is that a journey for just the final few miles will end up taking longer than the entire HS2 journey.

By more than halving journey times—potentially, more than two thirds at peak times—the real benefits of enhanced transport connectivity can be fully realised. By freeing up some of the road capacity, there will be advantages for motorists, too, and more reliable buses attracting people back on to public transport. It is also worth noting that single-stop rail travel between local stations in Stoke-on-Trent is often considerably cheaper than single-journey bus travel.

To conclude, reopening the Stoke-Leek line is a highly realistic option for levelling up opportunities in one of the most deprived cities in the entire country. It would reconnect communities and radically reduce journey times. Crucially, it would help us to reach a critical mass of public transport provision that we currently lack. I hope that our bid to explore reopening in detail is won and that the Government support our proposals fully.