Attending were myself, Nat Bocking,
as a Halesworth Town Councillor and the HTC chair Annette Dunning, Glyn Buck of
Brampton Station Adopters, James Steward, Area Customer Service Manager for
Greater Anglia, Tim Ward, the CRP officer and Trevor Garrod, chairman of East
Suffolk Transport Association and Geoff Butterwick, chairman of the CRP.
Geoff Butterwick outlined the
role and recent history of the CRP and made an invitation for all those present
to join the NORTH LINE GROUP of the partnership. The CRP is now divided into
three groups, the north covers the railway line from Halesworth to Lowestoft,
South covers Darsham to Ipswich and East is Westerfield to Felixstowe. When the
three line groups are established, each will elect a representative to sit on
the CRP board.
The East Suffolk Lines Community
Rail Partnership was launched in 2004, with aim of contributing to the
objectives of the National Community Rail Strategy, i.e.
•
increasing ridership, freight use and revenue;
•
managing costs down;
•
bringing about greater involvement of the local community; and
•
enabling local rail to play a larger role in economic and social regeneration.
Some of the 'wins' of the CRP
have been the Beccles Loop, improved signalling, establishing an hourly service and the
integrated ticketing and scheduling of the Halesworth and Southwold buses but
it has been acknowledged that the partnership has not been as active as it
could in involving communities which is why it has reorganised itself to emphasise
the 'community' and created a new board to give an enhanced role to
representatives of the local communities served by the railway by creating these new line groups.
The present board consists of
Chairman - Geoff Butterwick
Suffolk County Council - Sally
Harper and Tracy Vobe, Passenger Transport Manager (job share)
Ipswich Borough Council -
Michael Newsham, Planning Regeneration and Transport
Waveney/SCDC - Dr. Carolyn
Barnes, Projects Officer
Abellio Greater Anglia - Geraint
Hughes, Partnerships Manager
Network Rail - TBA
North Line Group - TBA
South Line Group - TBA
East Line Group - TBA
The CRP officer Tim Ward can do the leg-work of contacting groups and setting up
meetings and so on.
It was generally agreed by those
attending that creating the North Line Group (NLG) would be a useful endeavour but that the outreach to local community groups and businesses to join
the NLG was only just beginning.
Those attending pledged to contact people through their local networks of community and business
groups to encourage participation in the CRP and the North Line Group.
Trevor Garrod and I agreed that
initial meetings of the North Line Group should be coordinated with the
existing GOING GREEN TRANSPORT PROJECT meetings to make it convenient for all
attending. The next meeting of GGTP is December 3rd, 2013 at 10.30 am in the
Halesworth Town Council Chamber, London Road. Therefore it's suggested that the next
North Line Group meeting begins at 11.30 am. This will be subject to
confirmation.
The annual cost of membership in
the CRP has not been established. Discussing that and electing a chair for the
North Line Group would be some of the first order of business.
The
constitution of the CRP and other documentation is now online at
