Great British Railways HQ ‘belongs in Swindon’
WILTSHIRE MPs made the case for Swindon to host the headquarters of the new Great British Railways body earlier this week.
Great British Railways will replace Network Rail next year and South Swindon MP Sir Robert Buckland told a parliamentary debate that the Wiltshire town was the perfect place to host it.
He argued that not only did Swindon have unparalleled historic connections with the development of Britain’s railways, but the modern town was ideally suited for the headquarters.
Sir Robert said: “I do not stand here today in dreamy nostalgia but am hard-headed and clear-eyed about the future.
“Inevitably, Brunel’s name will come up many times, but as I have said, it was no accident that the greatest engineer and innovator of his age chose Swindon to be the home, heart and hub of the Great Western Railway 180 years ago. He was not wrong then and this bid is not wrong now. Swindon is the railways, past, present and future, and that future must, I strongly submit, include the headquarters of Great British Railways.”
One of the key issues that Sir Robert discussed was that Swindon’s bid was a value-for-money proposition.
He said: “The situation in Swindon will not require complicated land acquisitions. The land is already either in the possession or ownership of Network Rail or the local authority, Swindon Borough Council, which wants to work constructively with Network Rail to provide a complete package. We already have an almost tailor-made site for the headquarters.
“There is no need for negotiations with rapacious land agents. This is an opportunity that will provide outstanding value for money for the Government.”
Sir Robert added that the new Great British Railways had to be far more than just a rebrand of Network Rail and it had to reimagine how the railways worked in 21st-century Britian.
He told MPs: “For me and those who think like me, this is more than just an argument about where to cite a cadre of civil servants. The business model that governs railway service delivery is—I think by common consent—a flawed one. We are at 72% of pre-Covid passenger levels, but something has changed forever.
“Saturday is now the busiest passenger travel day, followed by Sunday and then Friday. Commuters are still travelling for business purposes, but the era of the annual season ticket is almost completely dead. Why, in the light of this newly acquired knowledge, do we persist with engineering works on weekends and holidays?
“A system where the rest of the country, including Swindon, subsidises fares in the south-east is neither fair nor sustainable. A system where a peak-hour ticket from Swindon to London is one of the most expensive tickets in Europe is certainly not fair or sustainable. That is why we need not just a building, but a hothouse of innovation, designing the railway network of tomorrow: its installations, equipment, people, systems and structures.
“I put it firmly on the record that we in Swindon understand that better than anybody.”
He said that the presence of major engineering firms in the town and the enthusiastic backing of the community were additional reasons for Swindon’s bid to be supported.
North Wiltshire MP James Gray added that Swindon’s bid had the backing of every single MP from elsewhere in Wiltshire.
Transport minister Wendy Morton thanked Sir Robert for making Swindon’s case and said the Government had received 42 bids from towns and cities across the country, including other ‘railway towns’ such as Crewe and York.
She said a shortlist of which bids will go forward will be announced next month.