We've started - but we won't finish!

Here is some of the local coverage in the Ilford Recorder and Yellow Advertiser of last Saturday's photo-call at Newbury Park Station organised by Seven Kings and Newbury Park Residents Association (SKNPRA). My letter to the Mayor of London based on our campaign is below: 

Dear Boris,

You have a reputation for candour and non nonsense talk. I am writing to ask you to use some of your famous candour with planners on the transport system in London who have been consistently promising step-free access to residents in Newbury Park and Seven Kings at our local stations and then failing to deliver.

Transport planners have been playing cruel tricks on local residents over step-free access at local stations. First, at Newbury Park where work started and then stopped, later at Seven Kings where Crossrail promises were made, then broken. As Chair of the local Resident's Association, I call on you to ensure London's transport planners make good on these broken promises and deliver the step-free access that has repeatedly been promised to local residents.

Extensive preparatory work for step-free access at Newbury Park Station was carried out in 2009/10 as detailed at http://daps-ltd.co.uk/portfolio_item/newbury-park-station-step-free-access-design-and-build/. This work cost £3.5m, public money which will have been utterly wasted unless TfL complete what they began and deliver step-free access at this Station. 

At the time this work was cancelled, London Underground said: "The status of the Undergrounds step-free plans is very disappointing to us - after years of planning and development work." They also stated that "the enabling works which had taken place will as far as possible ensure future SFA routes can be preserved" in order that "These projects could be restarted in the future" (http://www.transportforall.org.uk/news/-64-million-cost-of-abandoned-step-free-tube).

These have proved to be weasel words because this project has not been restarted and, although work is happening to make certain stations step-free, this does not include Newbury Park.

This is not the first occasion that TfL have agreed to action in our local area only to later change criteria in order to, in effect, renege on earlier promises. Through our Residents' Association, local people are saying that we have had enough of this practice. The reasons why Newbury Park Station warranted step-free access in 2009/10 still stand and we call on you to ensure that TfL finish what they started. 

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Luxury - When Those That Are Not Do Become Those That Are.