As you may know, the East West Rail Company is currently consulting on the route alignments for the Oxford to Cambridge route.
This consultation covers a number of different areas including route alignment into, through and out of Bedford Borough, stations and level crossings.
Bedford Borough Council is a consultee and will be responding to the East West Rail Company’s consultation and is holding two virtual meetings to hear views from residents and businesses.
During the meetings, there will be a presentation and a question and answer session with me, Councillor Michael Headley and the Chief Officer for Planning and Infrastructure Development.
These meetings will take place on Wednesday 12 May from 12pm-2pm and Thursday 13 May from 6.30pm-8.30pm.
Due to the nature of virtual meetings, questions and comments will need to be submitted in advance of the meeting- via email to EWRpublicmeetings@bedford.gov.uk.
All questions and comments will need to be submitted by 8am on Friday 7 May.
Any questions that aren’t addressed due to time restrictions will receive a written response.
The Council are hosting these public meetings to help ensure that the Council hear residents’ and businesses’ voices on what they would like to see in the Council’s response to this East West Rail Company consultation.
If you are not able to attend either of these meetings or even if you can, there is also a form available on the Council website where you can let the Council know your views at bedford.gov.uk/eastwestrailconsultation.
The virtual meetings will not form a consultation response in themselves but will be a listening exercise on behalf of the Council.
These public meetings are not a replacement for the consultation being run by the East West Rail Company – residents, businesses and interested parties must reply directly to the East West Rail Company and this can be done via eastwestrail.co.uk.
The East West Rail Company are also holding public events and have virtual consultation rooms where you can find out more information about the proposals and have your say directly to the East West Rail Company.
You can find out more about their public events at eastwestrail.co.uk/consultation and their virtual consultation rooms at eastwestrail.co.uk/consultation/virtual.
This is a monthly guest column provided by
Mayor Dave Hodgson (Liberal Democrats).
It is published unedited and does not reflect the
views of the Bedford Independent.
