Beam Park Station

Debate between Jon Cruddas and Christina Rees

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

I will not read the preamble, because we have already been through it.

[Jon Cruddas (Dagenham and Rainham) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered plans for Beam Park Station.

This afternoon, I will make a series of points relating to the failure to proceed with the proposed station at Beam Park in my constituency. The station is essential for a number of reasons. First, it will successfully complete the Beam Park housing development and wider regeneration across South Havering, and Barking and Dagenham. It remains key to unlocking other housing schemes along the A1306 eastwards towards Rainham and westwards towards Dagenham, an area forming part of London’s largest opportunity area. The station is central to making a success of those possibilities.

Secondly, the station is essential to making good on countless promises made over many years to local residents who have bought homes there, the value of which they fear is fast depreciating. They feel that they have been deceived. Thirdly, the station is essential to following through with commitments made to people in the wider community, who have accepted new housing on the basis of promised new infrastructure. They, too, feel let down and angry.

There is also a wider national issue regarding the so-called levelling-up agenda. If the Government are serious about imposing housing targets on local authorities, they must accept and support the infrastructure and services to go with them, especially when for years they have been promised to residents in order to secure their consent for the plans. In that sense, Beam Park station is an example of how not to regenerate local communities, and how to maximise cynicism and anger in them. People feel manipulated and exploited by the planning system. It is a story of promises made and subsequently withdrawn once consent has been secured. Unless the situation is resolved, I fear that there will be long-lasting effects that will inhibit future economic development and undermine community support for future regeneration, so the stakes are pretty high locally.

By way of background, the Conservative London Borough of Havering has historically been the prime mover behind the planned Beam Park station; it then secured wider support. The detailed project came via the housing zone programme, which was devised by the Prime Minister when he served as Mayor of London. Under Mayor Johnson’s programme, London boroughs could seek housing zone status, and funding based on bids that would commit to increasing housing outputs. The funding was primarily for infrastructure projects or land remediation that would facilitate large-scale housing development. That was always the purpose of the station: to secure more housing units.

As far back as 2013, Havering worked up a bid for the Greater London Authority to bring about the development of Beam Park station. The bid was approved by Havering Council’s cabinet in August 2014, and was driven through by the then housing cabinet member Damian White, the present council leader. In June 2015, Havering secured housing zone status and funding for the Beam Park development programme—one of only four agreed at the time. It was a flagship policy for the then Mayor Johnson, who said:

“Housing Zones will provide the swift delivery of new homes for Londoners that is so desperately needed and create entirely new, highly-connected urban districts”.

In December 2015, Havering and the GLA entered into an agreement for £9.6 million of housing zone funding to cover the station design and initial construction of the site. Havering then funded the governance for railway investment projects process through a contract with Network Rail. Standard documents from Network Rail were then reviewed by the GLA’s internal and external legal advisers. In 2020, the GLA agreed to invest some £32.75 million to construct Beam Park station, stating that the GLA and Countryside Properties, the developer,

“have been working closely with Network Rail…to progress plans for the station.”

It was a done deal, or at least appeared to be. It was signed off by the Conservative Mayor, the Conservative council and developers, and had secured the backing of the Conservative Government, or so we were all led to believe—for example, by the way that Network Rail was involved in progressing the project throughout the process. Network Rail was a willing partner. The Network Rail route utilisation plan from July 2020 describes Beam Park as a “committed scheme”. Once operational, the station was to be transferred to the franchise operator c2c, who would have ongoing responsibility for the station. Once again, c2c was a willing partner. Everyone realises that without additional infrastructure, existing c2c stations will crack under the pressure of an expanding population. Over the years I have worked with c2c to alleviate congestion at Rainham station, and it literally cannot cope with thousands more commuters, and could well become unsafe at peak times.