Crewe deserves better

While it’s good to see proposals for more train factories in the UK, I despair at the fact that a once proud and thriving railway town (Crewe) keeps being passed over in favour of places with no existing skills base or related industry.

The Government is keen to boast of the benefits to Crewe from HS2. In reality, it will probably just have a detrimental effect by turning the

area into a commuter belt with demand for yet more housing and more traffic, despite the fact that the area has shouldered a large percentage of the country’s house building already and its roads are gridlocked.

Crewe was passed over for the Government’s High Speed Rail college. It has also been passed over for the infrastructural maintenance depot in favour of Stone, despite over 90% of respondents to the Government’s consultation being against it.

There is no rail industry or skills base in the Stone area. Insanely, the reason for its preference seems to be M6 access at a time when the Government is supposed to be encouraging more rail freight. It could go a long way towards that itself by sending rail construction materials by rail.

Crewe is now a ghost town, with the loss of the rail industry over the past 20 years, particularly train manufacturing. Its only positive is the Bentley factory -ironically, when that was established by Rolls-Royce, Crewe was chosen due to its engineering skills base because of the railway works.

There is still a reasonable amount of rail maintenance based in Crewe, and it would make sense to build on that and the engineering skill base that exists thanks to Bentley, yet the rail industry seems content to reinvent the wheel elsewhere. Andrew Wood, Nantwich