Bedford Elections: Traffic one of the top concerns for Conservative candidate for Great Barford

Councillor Stephen Moon is standing for reelection in the new, smaller Great Barford Ward in May’s local elections.

Boundary changes mean that only one councillor will be elected to represent residents in the rural ward.

The Conservative councillor was first elected in 2011. “I had been considering it for some time, and a number of people suggested that I should,” he said.

“I was a councillor in Camden when I lived in London, and it’s a job that needs doing and I thought I’d do it.”

Councillor Moon said traffic is a continuous concern for ward residents

“When something happens in one location the knock-on effects across the network are considerable,” he said.

“We suffered for a period when the Black Cat was closing periodically, the queues and congestion in Great Barford and surrounding villages were considerable.

“The construction of the new Black Cat will solve the problems when it’s built.

“As it stands, it’s not an adequate design for the volume of the traffic, which causes queues to build up, it causes accidents and then the road closes and we get swamped again,” he added.

There is a legal case over the Black Cat project under way at the moment, which councillor Moon said will delay the start, but he can’t see it stopping it.

“The bigger legal case will be the development control order hearing for the East West Railway,” he said.

“I’m anti the project, the route is clearly set, if it takes place it’ll be one of the northern routes.

“The consultation was defective because it had a price list which indicated there was no possibility of it being a northern route.

“Then they changed the batting order for the costings, and suddenly the northern route became the cheapest when it had been the second most expensive.

“And there’s the delay, and the delay is woeful, the harm is doing the people who are in the path whether it’s in Poets or whether it’s in the villages.

“Businesses are threatened, houses are threatened, people can’t move because of planning blight.

“Big infrastructure schemes are things that this country is really bad at, and this is showing signs of being one of them.

“It’s based on this spurious notion that Oxford and Cambridge have to be connected by railway line.

“The trouble is all the government went to either Oxford or Cambridge, so they believe that’s the centre of the universe and they want to connect it up,” he said.

Residents wishing to know more about councillor Moon’s campaign can email him [email protected] or call 01234 870061.

But why is he standing again?

“I think it’s something one can do, and during the first period of being a councillor you’re not much use in my experience,” he said

“Because you don’t know how to do things, or how things get done, and who to contact in order to get things done efficiently.

“I think we get better at it as we stay in longer and become more effective.

“So I’m going to give it one more shot, at least I’m going to try and give it one more shot,” he said.