The South Fylde Line Community Rail Partnership (SFLCRP) held it’s winter quarterly meeting on Thursday 18th January 2024. The meeting was held as an online meeting and attend by representatives from Community Rail Lancashire, Northern Railways, Lancashire County Council, Blackpool Council, Network Rail, Community Rail Network, Blackpool Transport, local Rail User Groups and Friends of Stations.
Richard Watts, Partnership Secretary, spoke about the Activity Plan including the following updates:
+ Noted that the SFL Community Rail Partnership (CRP) along with the other CRPs and CRL had been successfully reaccredited by the Community Rail Network (see image above).
+ Noted that Community Rail Week 2024 (#CRW24) starts for CRL on Sunday 19 May 2024 with a visit to the National Railway Museum in York. A number of number of activities have already been suggested and will include the official burying of the Time Capsule at St. Anne’s station.
+ Noted that 2025 is the 200th anniversary of the railways and plans are being drawn up for celebrations and a website is up and running at railway200.co.uk
Next Owain Roberts, Regional Stakeholder Manager, Northern Trains, showed a presentation covering points including the recent performance issues, ongoing negotiations with the RMT Union around Sunday working and ‘Stations as a Place’ a new Northern initiative. Martin Keating, Regional Community & Sustainability Manager (West) spoke about Community Rail and in particular about the need to recruit more station volunteers. The Full presentation can be seen on this link: South Fylde CRP presentation January 2024
Following this was a presentation by Matt Worman, Regional Growth Manager with Avanti West Coast talked through a presentation covering aspects of performance, service quality and Pendolino refurbishments. The presentation can be downloaded here AWC SFLCRP January 2024.
Next was a report from Lancashire County Council’s Rail Development Manager, Mike Cliffe who spoke about the continuing plans for level access at Squires Gate station, Lancashire’s Bus Service Improvement Plans (BSIP) and the various outstanding Restoring Your Railway bids that are waiting for responses from the Department of Transport.
A number of other updates followed from Blackpool Council, The Friends of Stations Groups, Network Rail, the Community Rail Network and The British Transport Police.
The next meeting will be the Annual General Meeting and will take place as a live meeting in taking place on Thursday 9 May 2024.