Transport Infrastructure: Essex

Will Quince Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I echo the comments congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) on securing this important and timely debate. I want to focus my remarks on Colchester, but will touch on a number of the different routes that she has already referenced. It has been a pleasure to serve with her on the Great Eastern main line taskforce, where we have made huge progress, although there is a lot of work still to do, and on the A120 and A12 campaigns.

Colchester is not only Britain’s oldest recorded town, but the fastest-growing town in the country, which it has been for some time. We have had tens of thousands of homes built without the adequate infrastructure to support that. Anybody who has visited Colchester, at peak times in particular, will have seen that there is considerable congestion and regular gridlock. Essex County Council, under the leadership of Councillor Kevin Bentley, is doing its best and there are some significant schemes under way in Colchester, but anybody in Colchester knows that that is not enough, and we need to secure further investment from the Government to keep our town moving.

Colchester has considerable potential: we have unbelievable links because of our location; we are central, for road, rail, air and sea; we are 50 minutes from the City of London, 30 minutes from Harwich international port and 45 minutes from London Stansted airport; we are the small and medium-sized enterprise capital of East Anglia; and we have around 600 creative and digital businesses, and that figure is growing almost by the day.

To unlock our town’s business and economic growth potential, we have to ensure that it does not regularly grind to a halt, as it sadly does at the moment. For that, we need significant infrastructure investment. I want to focus on the large-scale infrastructure projects of the A12, the A120 and the Great Eastern main line, but we should not forget local transport infrastructure too.

The Government want Colchester Borough Council to build around 1,000 homes every year, and so far it has been hugely successful in that endeavour, building more than double of any other district or borough in the county of Essex. For that to be facilitated and for it to work—many in Colchester would question whether we should be building so much—the Government have to provide adequate transport infrastructure funding along with it. As a result, housing infrastructure fund bids are very important, and it is essential that the Government look favourably on those from our borough.

One example is the East of Colchester garden settlement plan. The garden settlement plan is not an uncontroversial programme in Essex, but the garden settlement to the east of Colchester is probably the less controversial of the two. It can work only if we secure funding for a new link road between the A133 and the A120, together with a rapid transport scheme to get people in and out of Colchester, because that will unlock the congestion on the Ipswich Road through Highwoods, St John’s and St Anne’s. That is the only way that the scheme can work, and I ask the Minister to look on it favourably.

My focus today is on the main projects—the A12, the A120 and the Great Eastern main line. While my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham was taking a sabbatical in the Cabinet, I stepped up and took on the chairmanship of the Great Eastern main line taskforce. Tens of thousands of commuters in and around my constituency use our station—certainly 15,000, and perhaps 20,000—and any one of those commuters will know that the Great Eastern main line is operating at capacity between Colchester and London. Given the growth pressure and the housing that the Government expect Essex to deliver, that is not sustainable.

We need infrastructure investment on the Great Eastern main line, and on projects already mentioned by my right hon. Friend—the Bow junction remodelling; the loops between Shenfield and Witham, probably the most important in enabling capacity on the line; the loops south of Colchester; the Haughley junction doubling; and, of course, the digital railway.

I sat on the Transport Committee with you, Mr Stringer, and we looked at the digital railway and the opportunity there to increase capacity by up to 40%. I was disappointed that we were not included as part of the initial pilot, despite the lobbying of every single MP on our line for the Great Eastern main line to be part of the digital railway pilot. I know Greater Anglia, our rail operating company, is looking into other options, but I implore the Government to look at this seriously, as capacity is a major issue and we know that the digital railway is an opportunity to unlock it. We have a brand-new fleet of trains on order, the first of which arrive this year. The equipment is therefore built into those trains already, and it is essential that we get the signalling right. Investment by the Government will unlock huge capacity on our line and, dare I say, enable the housing growth that the Government want to see.

That is part of why we must address capacity, but also, our commuters are not getting value for money. At peak times, they are very often standing. My Colchester commuters pay in excess of £5,000 a year for a season ticket, just to get to and from work. We must ensure that we deliver value for money for them.

My right hon. Friend touched on Delay Repay; I know it is not hugely relevant to the debate, so I will touch on it only briefly. We were promised that it would be delivered within weeks of the Adjournment debate a few weeks ago, so I push the Department for Transport to make that announcement as soon as possible. The eyes of rail users across north Essex and the wider region are certainly on the Department.

I very much welcome the new trains, but they are only part of the jigsaw. They will inevitably lead to fewer delays because we will have fewer train breakdowns and issues, but the Network Rail piece is equally important. I welcome the £2 billion Network Rail settlement, but I ask the Minister to make sure that it is delivered on time and that it is kept under close consideration, because we have to ensure the full jigsaw—the new trains along with signalling and track work—so that we are not suffering the delays we so frequently experience at the moment.

As my right hon. Friend mentioned, the A120 is one of the most important east-to-west roads in Essex, between Braintree and the A12. It is little more than a country lane on many parts of that route. Anybody who has tried to get between Braintree and Colchester and got stuck behind a caravan or a crash will know that people can be waiting there for a considerable period.

The A120 is the only single carriageway road in England connecting a major international airport with a major international seaport. As my right hon. Friend mentioned, the dualling was cancelled under the last Labour Government. Heaven forbid that we have another Labour Government in the near future, but would it not be a huge wasted opportunity if, 10 years on from the cancellation of the previous scheme, some future Labour Government, just as we got round to delivering it, cancelled it all over again? I implore the Minister to get on with this and to make sure that A120 dualling is part of the road investment strategy, RIS2. That is absolutely vital. As eloquently and passionately put by my right hon. Friend, the reason is that the A120 is heavily over capacity.

Around 25,000 vehicles use that single-track road every single day—15% of them are heavy goods vehicles—and traffic volume is set to increase further year on year. Some 24% of the road is regularly congested. For five hours a day, journeys are delayed in both directions. For six hours a day, sections of the road carry more vehicles than it was built for.

As my right hon. Friend pointed out, we have an increasing collision trend, which should worry us all. There is a high rate of serious casualties compared with the national average for a single carriageway trunk road. Even if we park all those issues, which are compelling enough reasons to upgrade the A120, we have the even more compelling ground of economic growth. Essex County Council’s favoured option would see a benefit-cost ratio—my right hon. Friend has already pointed this out, but it is well worth repeating—of 4.5, which means that it would deliver £4.5 million-worth of benefits for every £1 million spent, including unlocking up to 20,000 jobs and £2.2 billion in gross value added to the local economy. It is important to note that this option has wide support from businesses, local authorities, parliamentarians and business leaders. In mid and north Essex, we very much sing with one voice in calling on the Government to invest and ensure that we see that scheme as part of RIS2.

The A12 is another road that is hugely important—it is an artery through Essex. It is already approaching capacity, with the flow-to-capacity ratio on the two-lane sections well over tolerable limits: typically, it is between 70% and 90% in peak hours. From the many tweets I receive from my constituents, I know how many times they get stuck on that road. RIS1 identifies the whole route for upgrading to a three lane standard throughout, starting with the section between junction 19 at Boreham in Chelmsford and junction 25 at Marks Tey in Colchester.

We desperately want the Government to announce preferred route status for that section in RIS1. We accepted a short delay; when the Minister sent us the letter, we met him immediately afterwards and were told that it would be a delay of three to six months, which has drifted somewhat. We wanted that delivered as part of RIS1. Ideally, we then wanted the north of junction 25 on the A12 to be delivered as part of RIS2. That is absolutely vital to our county.

I want Highways England to look at my plan for a new junction at Lexden between junctions 26 and 28, because junction 27 has no southbound exit. There has been much growth in Stanway—mostly housing, but also the huge retail development at Tollgate. That is at junction 26. Likewise, at junction 28, we have future plans for the northern gateway—a huge leisure development. Those junctions will become more and more congested, so my plan for a new junction southbound on the A12 deserves serious consideration. I hope I can meet the Minister to discuss that further.

I have reiterated the points made by my right hon. Friend, but they are so important to our county and my town of Colchester. I want to emphasise that there is huge potential to unlock economic growth across Essex and in my home town of Colchester, but we need investment in our transport infrastructure to realise that potential.