Wendy Morton

I beg to move, That this House has considered the future of Aldridge train station. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on the proposed development of a new train station in my Aldridge-Brownhills constituency and its funding through the city region sustainable transport settlement, known as CRSTS, which is less of a mouthful. I will start with a little background about Aldridge-Brownhills and where we have got to with the development of a train station. Currently Aldridge-Brownhills is one of only 49 constituencies in this country that do not have a passenger train station and one of three in the West Midlands combined authority area. That is worth remembering. As in so many other areas, we lost our station in Aldridge due to the 1960s Beeching cuts. The last passenger train left Aldridge in 1965. Although we still have a freight line with freight trains operating on it, we do not have passenger services, but what we do have is a vision and determination to once again see passenger train services stopping at and running through Aldridge. Things began to change in 2017. Following the first West Midlands mayoral election and the establishment of the West Midlands combined authority under Andy Street, the mayor laid down a bold and ambitious transport plan for the West Midlands region up until 2040.