Big city fear for villagers near East West station

Villagers whose rural home place has been earmarked for a major new train station have voiced concerns they "don't want the village to turn into a city".

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has backed building Tempsford station in Bedfordshire, which would offer connections to the East Coast Main Line and East West Rail, as part of a move to make "Europe's Silicon Valley" between Oxford and Cambridge.

During a landmark speech on economic growth, Ms Reeves said on Wednesday the government would "move quicker to deliver a main line station".

Parish council chairman David Sutton said residents were worried, with an East West Rail report suggesting the village of about 600 inhabitants could grow to 44,000.

East West Rail said the new interchange station in Tempsford, between Sandy and St Neots in Cambridgeshire, was now due to be "delivered up to five years earlier than planned", but no specific date was mentioned.

It would serve customers on the East Coast Main Line travelling north to south, while the £5bn Oxford to Cambridge track underwent construction.

Reeves said while university cities Oxford and Cambridge were "only 66 miles apart", there was a lack of fast rail travel between the area's towns and cities and affordable homes.

The chancellor said investments in the Oxford to Cambridge corridor could add £78bn to the UK economy by 2035.

Support was pledged to fund the East West Rail link - joining Oxford to Cambridge via places including Milton Keynes and Bedford - and the new Tempsford station.

Reeves said: "At Tempsford - the nexus of the East Coast Main Line, the A1 and East West Rail - we will move quicker to deliver a main line station, meaning journey times to London of under an hour and to Cambridge within 30 minutes when East West Rail is operational."

Leader of Central Bedfordshire Council, Adam Zerny (Independent), said while the high speed rail connections would bring new opportunities, he had met government officials to say houses and corresponding infrastructure must be built in the right place.

"I have shared... we have major concerns about big housing schemes around Tempsford, given the proximity of a major flood plain," he said.

Mr Sutton, who is also a landlord and reopened The Wheatsheaf village pub three months ago, said people were "not against all development, but don't want the village to turn into a city".

"I actually think more people are coming round to development, but it is just about the scale of it.

"We don't want tens of thousands of homes and no infrastructure.

"It's a very small rural community - they've either farmed here for generations or they've moved specifically to a rural community, they don't want to live in a big city."

He added there were also concerns about noise from the trains, a lack of access to the station from the new A421 and the impact of housebuilding, given Tempsford's "worse and worse" annual winter flooding.

Farmer Richard Infield, whose family has lived in the area since the 1600s, was one of those who echoed the worries about the village's flood issues.

"The more housing and railways we have coming in, it's going to create more problems for us to get rid of the water," he said.

"If you're going to put more hard surfaces down, you're going to have water come quicker.

"With all the building that has happened in Bedfordshire, we're getting to the point where we're saturated.

"It's making life a lot, lot harder for us to live in these areas."

A consultation into the site and design of Tempsford station ended last week, after the preferred route was revealed in May 2023.

The station's exact location and final design will be disclosed at the statutory consultation, due to be held in the next year.

Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.