Community Rail Partnership recognises 'Community'

A meeting of the East Suffolk Lines Community Rail Partnership (CRP) was held at 19:00 in the Day Centre London Road Halesworth on Tuesday 29th October 2013. 

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

http://eastsuffolkline.co.uk/about/community-rail-partnership

Anyone interested in participating in the Community Rail Partnership should contact Tim Ward at major.ward@btinternet.com