A boost from the Budget…

…now the Midlands must make its vision a reality

are also going to build better railways, Madam Deputy Speaker. With spades going into the ground on HS2 and funding today… for the Midlands Rail Hub...”

A collective scream echoed around the Midlands Connect offices when new Chancellor Rishi Sunak name-checked our flagship rail scheme in his maiden Budget speech on March 11. A quick scan of the small print revealed a £20 million funding commitment, allowing us to get started on an Outline Business Case with Network Rail and the Department for Transport. Our vision had moved one step closer to reality. Our hard work had been worth it.

That the Chancellor of the Exchequer specifically referenced the Midlands Rail Hub (MRH) is a marker of just how far the Midlands Connect partnership has come in the past year.

Since submitting our Strategic Outline Business Case to the DfT last summer, MPs, government ministers and even the new Prime Minister have started talking about our £2 billion proposals as the answer to poor rail connectivity between the East Midlands and the West Midlands. Midlands Rail Hub made it into the Conservatives’ General Election manifesto, taking pride of place alongside Northern Powerhouse Rail, and now here it was at the Despatch Box in the House of Commons.

The hard work starts now, of course. With a government committed to “levelling up” our economy and unleashing an “infrastructure revolution”, our job now is to define what that means for the Midlands. We have a job to explain what the Midlands Rail Hub is and how it will benefit passengers and freight.

While informed readers of RAIL will know it is a series of network interventions to generate desperately needed capacity (from passing places and platforms to signalling, new track and two new chords at Camp Hill in Birmingham), some still describe it as a physical ‘hub’ - a single construction somehow capable of conjuring 24 extra train services an hour to life in all corners of the Midlands. If only things were that simple.

Awareness will improve as MRH moves through the emerging Rail Network Enhancements Pipeline (RNEP). And with the right leadership and determination, some of the interventions in the programme could start to be delivered before the end of this Parliament. Reopening the mothballed Platform 4 at Birmingham Snow Hill station, for example, is a relatively simple and inexpensive proposition that will relieve some of the capacity constraints at Birmingham Moor Street.

But the Midlands Rail Hub is not the extent of our ambition. We are looking for more from this government - a statement of intent about what we can achieve on the region’s railways if we work together.

MRH is the flagship scheme of our wider Midlands Engine Rail (MER) programme, which includes seven projects in total. While MRH means faster and more frequent services to and from Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Hereford and Worcester, the other six projects within MER bring in Shrewsbury, Telford, Stoke-on-Trent and Lincoln, as well as new conventionalcompatible HS2 services from Leicester to Leeds and Birmingham to Nottingham. Unlike MRH, most of the MER programme uses capacity released by HS2 to benefit the existing network.

While MPs and ministers are starting to understand the wider benefits of MER and to push for investment to develop the programme, we will have to wait for the autumn Comprehensive Spending Review for more government funding. The next six to nine months therefore present a golden opportunity to make the case for MER.

While HS2 was under review, it was difficult for the Government to endorse a programme which complemented high-speed rail so closely. Now, with the high-speed network confirmed and an integrated rail plan with proposals such as MER top of its agenda, our plans will come into their own.

The MER programme is particularly important to fully realise the potential of the HS2 East Midlands Hub station at Toton. We are working closely with HS2 Ltd and the DfT on our plans for direct conventionalcompatible services from Leicester to Leeds and Birmingham to Nottingham for the first time, slashing journey times by more than half. Working with partners in the East Midlands, we are developing plans to connect the region’s towns and cities to Toton via conventional rail, tram and bus.

There are ambitious plans, backed by government, to set up a Development Corporation to accelerate a huge regeneration plan around the site of the new station: an Innovation Campus with more than 10,000 new jobs; the redevelopment of Ratcliffe-onSoar power station after it is decommissioned in 2025; and thousands of new homes on the old Chetwynd Barracks.

With so much to gain from HS2 Phase 2b in the Midlands, it was disappointing when the Government’s integrated rail plan for the route was named ‘High Speed North’.

That initial disappointment has since been tempered. The new HS2 Minister Andrew Stephenson has visited Toton, where the East Midlands’ strongest HS2 advocates (including myself) showed him first-hand the scale of the opportunity the site represents. I have also received strong assurances that Midlands Connect and its partners in the East Midlands will have a full and influential role in the High Speed North Integrated Rail Plan.

We go into this process with some very specific requests to ensure the Midlands is not overlooked:

The Eastern Leg of Phase 2b must be constructed from the West Midlands to the East Midlands first.

If, as has been indicated, the Hybrid Bill for Phase 2b is broken up into western and eastern legs, the latter must still receive Royal Assent in this parliament.

Searching for cost-cutting and efficiencies, although necessary, must not be delivered by downgrading the line north of Birmingham. The East Midlands must not receive a secondclass service.

Due consideration must be given to accelerating development around the HS2 East Midlands Hub at Toton, so that jobs, homes and connectivity to nearby towns and cities can be baked in before HS2 arrives. The East Midlands doesn’t need to wait until 2040 to start reaping the benefits.

Perpetuating the North-South narrative and squeezing out the Midlands, the crossroads of the UK rail network, is no longer an option. We have a matter of months to get this right and properly integrate HS2 with the existing network.

As the director of a partnership that represents the strategic transport priorities of ten million people, it is essential that the Midlands is given due prominence alongside the North.

“Perpetuating the North-South narrative and squeezing out the Midlands, the crossroads of the UK rail network, is no longer an option.”