I am grateful to have been given this opportunity to raise a matter that is extremely important to my constituents, namely the rebuilding of Wickford station. I appreciate that the Rail Minister sits in the House of Lords, so he cannot be present to respond to the debate. I am grateful to his ministerial colleague, the Local Transport Minister, for being present in lieu, especially on a Friday afternoon when, no doubt, he also had pressing constituency demands. I thank him for that.
Before I get into the matter of the station itself, perhaps I can explain for context why its proposed redevelopment is so important for the regeneration of Wickford, the second largest town in my constituency. Wickford and my constituents who live there have been through a tough time over the last few years since the covid pandemic. We have seen a number of banks and several other retail outlets close on the high street, and footfall is not as high as local traders would like. The police station closed several years ago, although I understand that Basildon borough council, the local authority, has plans to redevelop the site as a community hub.
We used to have two medium-sized supermarkets in the town: a relatively new one run by Aldi and a more long-standing one run by the Co-op. Unfortunately, the Co-op store closed several years ago, while Aldi demolished its old store in order to build a new, enlarged version. The net effect was that for over a year the town had no supermarket of its own, other than a small Iceland in the high street. That meant that my constituents often had to travel some distance to conduct their weekly shop. On top of that, there have been quite a number of flats built in the town in the past few years, which has meant that we have lost quite a lot of car parking space, particularly as a large part of the town’s main car park, located next to the old Co-op site, has been blocked off, making the town a more difficult place to visit for those who have to come by car as opposed to rail.
I am pleased to report that Aldi rebuilt its store, which is at the bottom of a shallow slope leading directly down from Wickford station, and I had the honour of reopening it back in November 2023. In addition, the developers who own the old Co-op site, which is a five-minute walk from Wickford station, have submitted planning permission to Basildon borough council to demolish it and rebuild a brand-new store with a number of low-rise flats on top. We are very hopeful that they will soon succeed in agreeing a lease with a major supermarket chain, the name of which I have been asked not to mention because the negotiations have not yet concluded but is an open secret across the entire town. I very much hope that the negotiations will come rapidly to a close and then the company concerned can make a formal announcement.
Lastly, there have been a considerable number of roadworks in Wickford over the last few years, some of which have, unfortunately, overrun badly, including some not far from Wickford station itself. By far the worst transgressor in this regard is Cadent, which principally maintains gas infrastructure. It has further works planned in Wickford and other parts of my constituency, including Hockley, where the residents are so fed up with endless roadworks that some have nicknamed the village “Blockley”. In my experience, Cadent often starts late and clocks off early, which means that its works take far longer than would be necessary otherwise. It is one of the least productive companies I have ever seen. As I have a Transport Minister in front of me, I must tell him how appallingly Cadent has behaved with regard to my constituents. I hope we can follow that up separately, perhaps with his colleague the Roads Minister, the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood).
I mention all this to convey to the Minister that the town has gone through something of a tough time in recent years. As the local MP, I am very keen to promote its regeneration. That, I hope, segues nicely to the situation at Wickford station itself.
The issue arises because several years ago, Abellio Greater Anglia—as it was then known—demolished half of Wickford station in order to extend the platforms for a new fleet of 720-class trains. Those new trains were designed to replace relatively old class 321 rolling stock, which unfortunately suffered from quite a lot of reliability issues—I can see the Minister nodding. I am pleased to tell the House that since the new class of trains have been introduced, reliability has improved markedly, so in that respect my constituents have been getting a better service. However, the long-promised rebuild of the station has yet to occur. At present, Wickford station basically consists of several platforms, an old footbridge without a lift, and a number of very unattractive portacabins. I hope the Minister will accept that that is hardly a station fit for the 21st century.
The whole issue of rebuilding the station has turned into something of a Norse saga. I will not try the Minister’s patience this afternoon by attempting to recount every single twist and turn of the tale; suffice to say, the rebuild is long overdue. For several years, I have been consistently lobbying the Department for Transport to try to achieve the reconstruction of the station. As part of that effort, I made representations to the then Rail Minister, Huw Merriman MP. I am pleased to say that I managed to persuade him to ensure that funding was provided by the Department to allow Greater Anglia to undertake the work. I then told my constituents in all good faith that we finally had the money, and that I was therefore confident that works would begin.
In addition, Greater Anglia is part-owned by Mitsui, a very large Japanese corporation headquartered in Tokyo that has a number of global investments in different sectors, including transport. Back in March 2024—prior to the general election—I was serving on the House of Commons Defence Committee when we undertook a trip to Tokyo in order to prepare a report into the new global combat air programme, which aims to be the RAF’s new Spitfire for the 21st century. As we were in Tokyo anyway, in order to try to progress the rebuilding of Wickford station, I took the opportunity to try to organise a meeting with Mr Hayato Iiyama, who is the deputy general manager of Mitsui’s mobility and industrial business division, and as such oversees that corporation’s transport-related investments in the UK. The embassy absolutely went the extra mile—or perhaps I should say track—and managed to set up that meeting.
I was delighted to spend over an hour with Mr Iiyama to familiarise him with the background and context of the issue. I think it is fair to say that as an investor in Greater Anglia, he was very supportive, and undertook to see what he could do to help. I place my thanks to both him and Mitsui on the record. I should also like to thank the British ambassador, Ms Julia Longbottom, and her staff for helping to facilitate our discussion. I subsequently joked with her that when the new station eventually opens, I would like to see a plaque saying, “This station was rebuilt with the assistance of the British embassy in Tokyo.” If representatives of Greater Anglia are listening to this debate, as I hope they are—I have a funny feeling that they are—that is the least they could do after all of this.
Back in Britain, following the general election, Greater Anglia initiated a competition for a contractor to rebuild Wickford station. Unfortunately, because the programme itself had been subject to multiple delays, by the time the bids came back, it had slightly exceeded the originally allocated budget. Nevertheless, I understand that Greater Anglia has negotiated with the Department, which has managed to provide some extra resource so that the project can now go ahead—I thank the Department for that. On 28 February 2025, Greater Anglia formally announced that a contract to rebuild the station had been signed with Walker Construction, and that the rebuild of the station would finally go ahead. Indeed, Martin Beable, the managing director of Greater Anglia, said at the time, to quote from its press release:
“We are glad to confirm that the contract for the station upgrade at Wickford is now signed. We look forward to confirming details of the timings for the delivery of the scheme later in the Spring and then to the implementation of the project to provide customers with better facilities at the station.”
On that point, as someone who campaigned hard during the previous Parliament against what I described at the time as misguided proposals to remove the ticket offices in the majority of stations across the country, I am pleased to see that not only were those proposals abandoned, but the new design at Wickford station will include a ticket office. Indeed, the new design is, as I understand it, likely to be used as a model for the construction or reconstruction of other small and medium-sized stations across the country. As part of the design, there is an iconic clock tower—or so says the marketing material—on which people seem to have firm views either one way or the other. For the record, I quite like the look of it, but I appreciate that some of my constituents have different architectural tastes, shall we say. Nevertheless, the overall design is a good one, and the sooner they start building it, the better.
Having been in a lot of discussions with Greater Anglia over this project for several years now, I hope the Minister will forgive me if I take the opportunity, at Greater Anglia’s request, to remind him of the Department’s proposals to upgrade Ely junction, which it believes is an urgent and critical priority, and which has widespread business and industry support across East Anglia. I hope the Minister will forgive my cheek in taking this occasion to remind him of that priority.
Turning to the timings of the station rebuild project, given the history of all this, I can understand why Greater Anglia is cautious about providing timings for the programme because were they to be exceeded—for instance, because of bad weather during the construction phase—there would be a further wave of criticism from my constituents. Nevertheless, I do think it is reasonable to give my constituents at least some indication of how long all this will take.
Having spoken recently with the organisation, Greater Anglia is confident enough for me to say that it expects work to begin on the site this summer and that the work will be completed by 2026 at the latest, though it is hopeful that it might be able to shave some time off that, particularly if the good Lord is kind with the weather, which I very much hope He may yet be. I appreciate that there will be some inevitable disruption at the station while the works are undertaken. Nevertheless, Greater Anglia assures me that it will do everything it can to run a train service while the work is under way.
There is one additional issue that I would like to raise with the Minister regarding disabled access. A number of my constituents have contacted me to express their dismay that the proposed design does not include wheelchair-accessible facilities, such that people would still need to negotiate the old footbridge to reach the London-bound platforms. I note in passing that when the new station was constructed at London Southend airport several years ago, it included full disabled access as part of the design. I understand that would normally be facilitated by an Access for All grant, which Greater Anglia has previously applied for, but unfortunately it has been unsuccessful, at least to date. Perhaps the Minister would allow me to put in a plug for any future resources, which might yet be looked on more favourably, to solve this problem.
While such facilities would clearly be desirable, especially for my disabled constituents, given all the previous delays to the project, the absolute priority must be getting the rebuild under way. If we could eventually achieve full disabled access, that would be the icing on the cake.
To summarise, I thank the Minister for listening to my impassioned plea on behalf of my constituents after years of delay to finally get Wickford station rebuilt. As I said earlier, this has been a Norse saga with a whole number of twists and turns, but now that Greater Anglia has finally signed the building contract with Walker Construction, I hope that work can get under way this summer, and hopefully be completed by the end of 2026 at the latest and ideally sooner.
Having campaigned hard in the previous Parliament to maintain ticket offices in our stations across the country, I am pleased to note that the design of the new Wickford station will indeed contain a ticket office, as I believe that it is an important element of customer service. I am sure that my constituents will welcome the fact that the new station will have one as well. While the current design for the new station, which will be used as a model for other new small and medium-sized stations across the country, does not include full disabled access, I hope that at some point that will be provided at Wickford as well.
In the meantime, I am very pleased that the long-awaited rebuild of Wickford station will now finally go ahead, in order to serve my constituents and provide what they have long asked for: a station in Wickford that is fit for the 21st century. I thank the Minister for his patience as I have outlined so much of the background to the story. I now very much look forward to his reply.