Tales of Skullduggery at the BBC
As America recovers from one of its’ more tempestuous political periods, the void left is being filled from over the Atlantic by a small-town that has been rocked by stories of nebulous activity by it’s elected officials.
Bedford Borough Council (BBC) is the local authority for a quaint river town and it’s surrounding villages located about 50 miles north of London. With a population including the surrounding rural areas that fall under the authority of just over 170,000 according to the 2018 Census.
The town sits approximately in the middle of an arc between the University cities of Oxford and Cambridge, and this prime geographic location has thrust the town into the middle of a debate surrounding carbon-emission targets, and some significantly circumspect behaviour by the elected officials.
First impressions of the project at the centre of the dispute, a proposed railroad between Oxford and Cambridge stopping at towns including Bedford on-route, seems to be an admirable engineering plan to improve transport across the centre of England. It would contribute to meeting carbon emission targets, and provide a route for people and freight to get from the sea-ports in the east of England without the need to go into London and back out again as is the case today. The economic and environmental benefits for the proposed East West Rail (EWR) are generally agreed to be good for all the towns and cities concerned, so why is it attracting international attention?
From information available to the author, this appears to be a tale which involves the manipulation of data and communication by a local authority to bias an outcome that underneath has ugly political motivations, surrounding the Bedford to Cambridge part of the line.
The EWR railroad has been a point of discussion for many years and by 2019 five potential routes had been identified for public consultation. So far, so good, but this is where the story gets interesting.
Of the five potential routes, labeled A-E, the generally observed best route (Route A), with least disruption and cost, and which utilised exisitng and old infrastructure passing to the south of Bedford seemed to be the logical path. But there was a problem. The southern proposed route was going to pass through constituencies that were represented by those on the BBC committee.
Prior to the public consultation (more on that later), BBC commissioned their own independent report, by a small local consultancy firm, which discovered that the professional engineers behind the original proposals somehow got their estimates wrong by £Millions and the £336m ($473 million) difference between proposed Route A and proposed Route E, which was nearly double the cost, miraculously disappeared . The report also disagreed with the professional engineers on the construction the northern route would need to have a low enough gradient to for freight to travel the 130ft elevation increase at the start of the track just outside Bedford.
Independent engineers from a local group trying to bring this to wider attention show that the railroad would have to cross a river, a flood-plain (more on that later, too) and a road in the short 0.5 miles distance it needed to cover the elevation increase, almost certainly requiring a significant and visually imposing viaduct that would be dumped right through the middle of land that was marked as an area for conservation in the Bedford Borough Council’s own ‘Bedford Green Infrastructure Plan’ in 2009.
So what else went wrong other than a consultation paid-for by BBC with questionable validity, to change the plans from the prefered southern route to the more expensive and damaging northern route?
A public consultation programme ran throughout 2019 and was held in multiple locations over the year, but interestingly out of 8 public consultation meetings not a single one was held within the area for the proposed Route E. Quite clearly denying those people Route E would most effect both the opportunity to learn about the devestation about to change their lives forever, and severly restricting their ability to voice their concerns and objections.
This apparent maniupulation of the messaging continued through other distributiuon and communication channels and was with a background of heavy lobbying and campaigning by the Mayor for the most expensive and illogical Route E.
After a year of consultation a report was presented based on just 7,000 respondents claiming it to be the preferred route. The consultation area was much wider than just Bedford Borough (population 170,000) are covered of well over 350,000 people, and therefore represented less than 2% of the population.
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This author has not been able to ascertain the where those respondents lived in relation to the consultation area, but it is reasonable to assume they did not include the more than 30,000 people from the small area of the villages and communities to north of Bedford. More than 1,400 (5%) of that community have already signed a petition in less than 3 weeks asking for a full a thorough review of the consultation process and independent report, and the alleged manipulation by the Mayor and Bedford Borough Council.
Any new railroad is going to have environmental impacts and so whichever route this track eventually takes will carved up some parts of this scenic English countryside, but it is particularly interesting that the proposed Route E goes through a flood-plain and village that has a history of heavy flooding.
The village of Clapham, just to the north of Bedford sits alongside the River Great Ouse, a river which meanders it’s way through the village before making it’s journey downstream to the center of Bedford.
In 2020, the centre of this village was completely flooded, with residents forced to evacuate their homes and others kayaking down the main street. Drone and helicopter footage made national and international news.
Floods aren’t new to this village, and in 1998, and 1989 it was similarly devestated by severe flooding, with the flood plain turned into the largest lake in the area.
Further building and development around the area saw the most recent flood impact Bedford Town centre itself (image from Bedford Embankment)
Understandably locals are questioning how a large construction like a viaduct is going to impact future flooding, both in the village and in the town center with thousands of tonnes of earth displaced for the significant concrete foundations the behemoth will require, and once again the Bedford Borough Council are seemingly complicit in their silence.
Anyone familar with objections to infrastructure projects might argue that most of these things on their own simply point to a degree of incompetence by the BBC, were that the stories stopped there.
Additional information that has come to light throws even more shade over the proposed development and how Bedford Borough Council have presented it to the community.
First is concerning the type of trains that might run on the line, and in the interests of a new engineering project lauded to meet carbon emission targets one might expect a ‘green’ solution. Yet no mention has been made of electrifying the lines (which would require a network of pylons across the countryside to provide power), and indeed all reports point to the probable use of Diesel engines in order to generate the power required to haul freight up the steep gradient at the early part of the line.
The gradient issue seems to be increasingly an issue from several perspectives therefore, both in terms of practicality, cost, and the un-enivronmental solutions to overcome it.
Finally, coincidences in large scale projects of this nature do happen, but it is interesting to note that the Mayor of Bedford, Dave Hodgson, who has been in office for nearly 12 years since October 2009, has a very close association with Christine McHugh, who happens to also be a local Lib Dem Cllr for Bedford.
In October 2019, the East West Railway company announced it had appointed an Arup-led consortium to supply early works on the project, including, but not limited to ‘public consultation work and factual studies to inform decision making’. Christine McHugh is an Associate Director of Arup.
It will be interesting to see how this story develops. The eyes of the world are watching.
