Following a record number of people visiting events along the route, our third non-statutory consultation has drawn to a close with over 5,500 responses.
This consultation lasted over 10 weeks and provided people with the opportunity to share feedback on our early designs, including areas where we’re considering options. Feedback will be taken into account as we develop our designs in more detail and select preferred options, as well as being used to review potential opportunities and inform plans to mitigate the impacts of the project.
Consultations are a crucial part of the design process, giving people living locally the opportunity to help create the right railway for communities. We’d like to thank everyone who submitted feedback and appreciate people giving up their time to come along and learn more about East West Rail at one of our events.
Record-breaking community involvement
This consultation attracted record public engagement, with attendance at our in-person events far exceeding the total of 2,337 people who attended our Route Update Announcement in 2023 and the 3,523 who attended our first non-statutory consultation in 2019*.
More than 5,200 people visited 16 in-person events which took place in communities along the entire route,and gave communities the opportunity to view our designs in further detail, understand more about the consultation and speak with experts from the team.
“Public feedback is crucial to this project which is why we ran an extensive communications campaign alongside our engagement events, launched new social media accounts and sent postcards to more than 350,000 businesses and households.
“We are now working to review and analyse the feedback that has been received to help inform the continued development of the design, which we will present at our statutory consultation.”
David Hughes, CEO, East West Railway Company
What’s next
In the coming months, we’ll publish a report summarising the feedback from this consultation and people will be able to view it on our website. Although this consultation has now closed, we’ll continue to engage with stakeholders across the route to help refine the designs.
We’ll then host a statutory consultation to present more detailed information about the proposed infrastructure, its likely environmental impacts and the measures and strategies we’re developing to mitigate those impacts. Feedback from the statutory consultation will be taken into account before we finalise our proposals and submit our application for a Development Consent Order, which if approved, would grant consent to build the new railway between Bedford and Cambridge, as well as the other upgrades between Oxford and Bedford to deliver the full proposed EWR service.