Transport in Nottinghamshire

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Tom Randall

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Tom Randall (Gedling) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Transport in Nottinghamshire.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir George. I congratulate the Minister on her inaugural Westminster Hall debate. I thank colleagues from across our great county for attending this debate, and I look forward to hearing their contributions. I know that there are other county colleagues who would be here had their ministerial obligations allowed them.

If I may, Sir George, I want to take you on a journey to the heart of England, to a place where the English civil war began and ended. It gave the world Boots the chemist, D. H. Lawrence, Alan Sillitoe, Nicholas Hawksmoor, Sir Paul Smith, Torvill and Dean, Ken Clarke and Ed Balls. The strapline of Nottingham City Council used to be “Our style is legendary”. I submit that, across the arts and sciences, from medicine to sport, from politics to business and literature, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire compete on not only a national but an international stage.

In a global world, connectivity is key. It is therefore appropriate to talk about transport in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. I will talk about recent successes and what more we need to do. Our great county is not one of forests and bows and arrows; its legendary style is taking us into the future. Nottinghamshire is to host the world’s first fusion energy power plant at a site near Retford, bringing billions of pounds and thousands of jobs to the region. The East Midlands freeport, including the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station site in Rushcliffe, is the UK’s only inland freeport and promises to position the region as a green tech trailblazer, driving significant new job growth in the region as well as local and international trade.

But we need the funding to match those ambitions. The East Midlands Chamber and east midlands councils analysed the Treasury’s latest public expenditure statistical analysis for 2021. They found that there was a particular deficit in transport infrastructure spending, at just 64.7% of the UK average for 2020-21—the joint lowest of any UK region or nation. If the east midlands were funded at a level equivalent to the national average, it would have an extra £1.26 billion a year to spend on transport.

Over the past 10 years, there has been a growing gap in transport spend between the east midlands and the west midlands, where spend has been rising. In 2016-17, the £217 per head spent on transport in the east midlands was two thirds of the £322 received by the west midlands, and by 2019-20 that proportion had declined to 61%.

Before speaking about how we might remedy that, I want to praise the good news. I welcomed the publication of the integrated rail plan in 2021, which offered a £96 billion package. The Sun newspaper described the east midlands as the big winners of the plan, and I am particularly keen to see High Speed 2 come to Nottinghamshire to reduce not only travel times to London but the journey time from Nottingham to Birmingham from 74 minutes to 26 minutes. John Lewis might have closed its store in central Birmingham, but residents of Edgbaston and Selly Oak will have no trouble coming to Nottingham to shop.

I also welcome the integrated rail plan’s inclusion of the full electrification of the midland main line. It has been a long time coming. I remember as an 18-year-old attending my first Conservative parliamentary selection meeting for the 2001 general election and hearing the campaign hopefuls talking about it then. We seem finally to be making progress on that. I ask the Minister to confirm that the Government remain committed to delivering the integrated rail plan in full, including the plans for the east midlands generally and Nottinghamshire in particular, and that recent announcements about Northern Powerhouse Rail will not affect the county.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate on such an important topic. Does he share my concern that we have been promised investment in east midlands transport many times, only to be disappointed? Schemes such as the electrification of the midland main line have been promised and then withdrawn. Does he share my concern that we are having to wait longer and longer for the improved transport services that our region needs? Does he share my hope that the Minister will commit to some timescales for the completion of the electrification and the HS2 link to the east midlands?

[Tom Randall]

The hon. Lady comes to this debate with more experience than me of being a Nottinghamshire MP, having been in this House for some time. Also, as a former Chair of the Transport Committee, she speaks with some experience of this issue in particular. However, I come here optimistic and hopeful that we will see the progress that has perhaps eluded us for too long.

Our railways are not just about inter-city travel; getting into and out of cities from suburbs, towns and villages is equally important. The integrated rail plan offered, business case permitting, investment in the Robin Hood and Maid Marian lines. Can the Minister say whether these schemes are included in the Department’s acceleration unit’s portfolio of projects?

In my constituency of Gedling, we have three railway stations—Burton Joyce, Carlton and Netherfield—that are not being used to their full potential. They are pleasant stations, but local residents complain that if they have a train to take them to work in the morning, they will not necessarily have one to take them home. Too many trains pass through Gedling stations without stopping and rail services do not run late enough for the train to be an option for those travelling to the city of Nottingham for leisure.

This can and must be remedied. Improvements on the lines between Nottingham, Lincoln and Grantham can help to make rail journeys competitive with car journeys. I know that the Minister will receive a business case from Midlands Connect in the new year on how to make improvements on this line. Can she make a quick determination on that proposal? If she would like to visit any of those stations to help her to understand the problem, she is more than welcome to visit.

Netherfield station stands on the Grantham line, which runs south from Nottingham, which brings me to another serious topic: crossing the river. In “Henry IV, Part One”, Hotspur speaks of

“the smug and silver Trent”.

I would not describe the Trent as “silver” these days, but perhaps the river had reason to fill “smug” in February 2020, when it succeeded in bringing gridlock to Nottingham. There are three bridges across the River Trent in Greater Nottingham. The latest was opened to traffic in the early 1980s, having originally been built as a railway bridge in the 1870s. Over time, the growing city has had to rely on these existing connections, which lie in the centre of the western city.

In February 2020, it was discovered that water damage had corroded steelwork under the Clifton bridge, which is the only dual carriageway crossing in Greater Nottingham. That caused the temporary closure of the east bridge, which carries all eastbound traffic and one lane of westbound traffic, while the bridge was repaired. The closure of the Clifton bridge brought large parts of the city to a standstill at rush hour, including traffic on the A612 in Gedling, which is on the other side of Greater Nottingham. Natalie Fahy, editor of The Nottingham Post, wrote at the time:

“The closure of Clifton Bridge means traffic has been chaotic, with journeys of just a few miles taking people hours to complete. The QMC has been hard to reach, being stuck right at the epicentre of the crisis. Throw into the mix a high-stakes Forest game at home and you’ve got a big Nottingham problem.”

She concluded:

“The problem we’ve got is that there is no slack in our traffic system. We are incredibly vulnerable.”

Ms Fahy’s analysis is, I submit, entirely right. One remedy would be to construct a fourth crossing for road traffic across the River Trent in Greater Nottingham. A fourth Trent crossing to the east of the city would relieve the pressure on the existing system. If it was constructed in, for example, Colwick, that would complement the recently built Gedling access road, while also providing better services and better access to the A46 for residents in the eastern side of Nottingham.

Midlands Connect has described the A46, which runs from Somerset to Lincolnshire, as one of the country’s most important trade routes, performing an important local, regional and national function. The Government have previously signalled their commitment to the importance of the A46 in Nottinghamshire by widening the single carriageway section between Newark and Widmerpool, and there are plans for an A46 Newark bypass. A fourth Trent crossing would connect Gedling to the A46 corridor. I spoke earlier about the East Midlands freeport and the thousands of green jobs that it is destined to create. I want my constituents to be able to access those jobs, which a fourth Trent crossing would help them to do.

A full bridge would be costly, and I appreciate that infrastructure projects take time and need to progress step by step. However, I would be grateful if the Minister signalled her support for a strategic outline business case for such a project, which even in these financially straitened times would come in at a much more manageable £150,000.

I must resist the temptation to be too Gedling-focused in any debate about Nottinghamshire. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Darren Henry) cannot contribute to today’s debate, let me also mention Nottinghamshire County Council’s £40 million levelling-up bid to finance the planned Toton link road. The new link road would consist of a one-mile, single carriageway track between the A52 east of Bardills island and Stapleford lane, taking the form of a high-quality, landscaped boulevard with significant tree planting and walking and cycling routes. I know from the recently opened Gedling access road, which cost a similar amount, how transformative such a scheme can be. The Minister will be instinctively coy about commenting on levelling-up funding, but I gently ask whether the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is aware of the merits of these proposals.

My hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe would have also mentioned bus services and the vital lifeline they provide for elderly and vulnerable constituents, citing particular concern about the withdrawal of the L10 and L11 services in Bramcote, and now the withdrawal of the number 21. Other Members will likely also mention bus services, but locally in Gedling, I welcome the Government’s support for the bus service improvement plan, which will support a number of routes, including the 39, 53 and Lime Line services from Arnold to the city of Nottingham.

So far, I have focused on the south of the county. As someone who was born in Nottingham and lives in Arnold, I hope that is forgivable—I have tried to speak about what I know. I have also covered projects that might be considered high level. However, in any discussion about transport in Nottinghamshire, I ought to mention the concern of the average road user: potholes. It is no secret that Nottinghamshire’s roads need a bit of tender loving care, and the issue has been the subject of numerous local newspaper reports.

I will highlight two recent developments. The county council decided to replace—where possible—the much-hated, temporary “tarmac out of a bag” pothole repairs, which seemed to disintegrate as soon as workmen had tended to them, with a new patch repair way of cutting and filling, which works much better, lasts longer and is much neater. I also applaud the Conservative-run Nottinghamshire County Council’s decision to spend an extra £15 million on road repairs. Residents in and around Westdale lane in Carlton, to give one example of many, will much appreciate that forthcoming transformative investment.

We will hear shortly from the leader of Nottinghamshire County Council, my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley), and others who will speak knowledgeably about the entire county, particularly the north. In general, I am positive about the future possibilities for transport in Nottinghamshire, and the forthcoming Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire devolution deal, which will see transport decisions made more locally. Nottingham and Nottinghamshire’s leaders have worked in partnership with the Government to deliver a series of announcements for our region. I look forward to hearing colleagues’ contributions on how we can make sure that not only our style, but our transport, is made legendary.