'There is no consultation about what East West Rail is offering' claims mayor as Bedford faces 'a lot of pain'

The Conservative mayor was responding to a question from a borough resident at this week’s Full Council (Wednesday, November 27).

They asked him what steps and external assistance were being sought to inform and assist him and the council with forming a comprehensive response to the EWR consultation.

Mayor Tom Wootton said that EWR is not offering a consultation but is offering “engagement”.

“In my view consultation is where you put an idea up and you talk about it and you’re offered alternatives,” he said.

“As much as they can dress it up, there is no consultation about what [EWR] is offering us.

“Many of us have wasted a lot of time talking about six track and four track, we’re not being offered any of that, we’re being offered a six track solution,” he said.

Mayor Wootton added that there’s going to be a “lot of demolitions” and a “lot of pain”.

“The reality of what is going to happen to our town is out of all proportion,” he said.

“The shutting of those bridges is going to really affect huge amounts of trade and traffic in our town, the businesses will be affected. You can prove that by what happened when the Bromham Road [bridge] was shut.

“There’s going to be a huge amount of destruction in our town, and that’s all got to be catered for and looked at.

“I feel that the proposals we’ve had are not very good, they’re not fully worked out, and they seem to have taken a lot of detail away from what was there in the past,” he said.

Mayor Wootton said there will be a “special” council meeting in January to look at a technical report from council officers, and also what he described as a “political document”.

“I fully expect that to be something like ‘we don’t like this route’,” he said.

“Now, I don’t suppose there’ll be a lot of talk about the technical documents. But there will be an awful lot of talk about the political bit.”

The Local Democracy Reporting Service approached East West Rail about the mayor’s comments.

Its spokesperson said: “Our non-statutory consultation is a genuine opportunity for the public to provide feedback on our updated proposals to help inform our ongoing design work.

“We are presenting a number of options in our Consultation Document in and around Bedford.

“We are considering all feedback in detail, as we have done with the options we presented in our previous consultations in 2019 and 2021.

“Our 2024 consultation demonstrates areas across the route where our updated designs have clearly changed as a direct result of feedback, but they are not final and still subject to further refinement.”

“We are working really closely with individual landowners, residents and businesses to keep them informed about potential disruption during construction and our traffic management proposals to mitigate impacts as much as possible,” they said.