East West Rail proposals

In accordance with our commitment to be transparent about our dealings with the East West Rail Company, notes and agendas from meetings are included here. All documents are PDFs.

• Meeting held on 23 February 2024
• Follow-up note for meeting held on 23 February 2024
• Meeting held on 15 January 2024
• Meeting held on 18 December 2023
• Meeting held on 11 December 2023 
• Meeting held on 8 December 2023 
• Meeting held on 20 November 2023 
• Meeting held on 16 October 2023 
• Meeting held on 29 September 2023 
• Meeting held on 18 September 2023 
• Meeting held on 21 August 2023 
• Meeting held on 30 August 2023
• Meeting held on 10 August 2023
• Meeting held on 17 July 2023 
• Meeting held on 27 June 2023
• Meeting held on 19 May 2023 

A range of public meetings, attended by local residents, have taken place in Bedford to discuss the East West Railway Company’s recent Route Update Announcement.   

The meetings have been hosted by Mayor Tom Wootton.

Notes from the meetings are included here. All documents are PDFs:

• Mayoral public meeting on EWR held on 14 March 2024 
• Mayoral public meeting on EWR held on 6 November 2023 
• Mayoral public meeting on EWR held on 12 October 2023 
• Mayoral public meeting on EWR held on 9 October 2023 
• Mayoral public meeting on EWR held on 22 September 2023
• Mayoral public meeting on EWR held on 20 September 2023 
• Mayoral public meeting on EWR held on 18 July 2023
• Bedford East West Rail Economic Analysis 

East West Rail (EWR) undertook a consultation on its proposals for the route its railway will take through Bedford Borough. The consultation closed on 9 June 2021.

• View the proposals on the EWR website.

After consideration of all the EWR proposals and listening to residents’ views, the Council formulated its response which was debated at an informal meeting of Full Council on 2 June 2021.

Our formal response to the East West Rail consultation can be found here. 

Technical review of options

Bedford Borough Council commissioned SLC Rail, specialists in rail projects, to conduct a technical review of this section of the route in response to EWR's current consultation proposing six tracks to run north of the station. 

The report looked at options around the East West Rail route north of Bedford Midland (PDF) has shown that the service could run effectively using just the existing four lines, and avoid the need to demolish any homes in the Poets area.

Public meetings

We held two virtual public meetings to hear views from residents and businesses on what they wished to see in the Council’s response to the 2021 East West Rail consultation. These meetings were held on:

• Wednesday 12 May from 12pm - 2pm
• Thursday 13 May from 6.30pm – 8.30pm

Recordings of the public meetings can be found here: (12 May) and here (13 May).

We asked members of the public to submit questions for the meetings, not all of which could be answered during the meetings. 

You can view questions from the public here. 

Written answers to all questions have been provided. We have grouped the questions into 12 categories according to their subject matter. Answers to the questions can be found here:

• Category1 Q&A Choice of corridor E
• Category 2 Q&A Route options within Corridor E
• Category 3 Q&A Rural environments and villages
• Category 4 Q&A Demolition of houses in Poets etc
• Category 5 Q&A Freight train usage
• Category 6 Q&A Roads, traffic and parking
• Category 7 Q&A Costs and who pays
• Category 8 Q&A Electrification of the line
• Category 9 Q&A Disruption during Construction 
• Category 10 Q&A Plans for Bedford Midland Station
• Category 11 Q&A Local stations, St John’s, Wixams, etc.
• Category 12 Q&A Other 

Each of the categories will be uploaded as they become available.

East West Rail public meeting video presentation 

You can view the presentation by the Chief Officer for Planning, Infrastructure and Development in relation to the East West Rail Consultation as delivered at the recent EWR public meetings.

EWR carried out its consultation into route corridor options for the section of railway between Bedford and Cambridge in early 2019. You can read our response to that consultation and view technical documents here: 

• Response document 11 March 2019 (PDF)
• Bedford Borough Council covering letter 27 March 2019 (PDF)
• BBC Technical Response 1-2 Issue, March 2019 (PDF)
• Extracts of technical drawings (PDF)

You can also print out and read the East West Rail information leaflet (PDF).