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The Guardian
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘We have to move': historic village of Tempsford reels from plan to swell its 600 residents to 350,000
This is – they tell you in Tempsford – where Boudicca rallied against the Romans. Where the early English kings fought off the Danes and where Churchill launched secret flights to aid resistance fighters keeping the Nazis at bay. But the historic earthworks, wheatfields and RAF base of Tempsford may yet prove no match for a chancellor bent on housebuilding and growth, armed with thinktank reports and a 10-year infrastructure strategy. Before Rachel Reeves announced plans to accelerate a 'growth arc' between Oxford and Cambridge, the name of this tiny Bedfordshire village was likely unknown to most. Then, last month, the government confirmed plans to make it the site of a new railway station, where the planned East West Rail linking the university cities will meet the East Coast mainline from London. Tempsford could be an appealing commuter base for workers in any of those cities, but some see more potential still. As Labour came to power pledging 1.5 million new homes, a report from UK Day One urged that they should be built as new towns. And there was one obvious location. It was, said David Sutton, the chair of the parish council and landlord of the village pub, quite a moment when the 600 residents of Tempsford learned of plans to swell their ranks to 350,000 people. A previous local Bedfordshire plan had identified possible development opportunities, and the county has seen plenty of fields give way to housing estates, solar farms and wind turbines. But, Sutton said: 'There had been talk of 10,000 or 20,000 houses, then out of nowhere came this 350,000 [people] figure.' He said local reaction ranged 'from apathy, saying, 'well, nothing's happened yet,' to 'we have to move away.'' The post-war new towns of Stevenage and Welwyn, and the success story of the 1960s wave, Milton Keynes, are all relatively nearby. But as they thrived, Tempsford saw its century-old station axed in the Beeching cuts, and the expanded A1 road cut the settlement in two. On the east side of this division is Station Road, ending in a level crossing where East Coast main line trains whizz between London and Edinburgh. To the west is the pub, various Tudor buildings and the church. Union jacks fly over centuries-old thatched cottages and – if you can ignore the sound of the A1, tucked out of sight behind strategically placed trees – the rural England vibes are strong. Sutton's pub, the Wheatsheaf, reopened last year, and claims a history dating back at least as far as a coaching house on the site in the early 16th century. 'There's an element of being the only traditional pub in a city of hundreds of thousands of people that isn't all bad,' Sutton said. 'Milton Keynes shows how it could be done. But it isn't pretty.' The neighbouring village, Roxton, is already seeing development and could be swallowed up by the new town. Behind the bar of the Wheatsheaf, Fiona Nicholl said she recently sold her home in Roxton to move to Tempsford. 'I used to look out of my windows and see fields,' she said. 'Then I watched the road and houses grow up ... All this rural land disappeared. 'It just doesn't make any sense – it's just taking away the beauty of a rural area. The amount of stress it puts on the whole community is mad.' Roxton residents have just lost a planning appeal to stop a development that was admitted to be environmentally damaging. 'But that didn't outweigh the benefits of new housing,' said Deborah Jackson, a Wheatsheaf regular. 'If a council hasn't met its housing need, then the planners can ride roughshod over the rest.' It is very much the direction of travel, as the new Labour government has signalled, to favour the builders over the blockers. And Tempsford, unlike many new developments, will at least be well connected. As well as the promised new train station, work is underway to reshape the nearby Black Cat roundabout. Part of a £1bn investment by National Highways, this will complete the dual carriageway between Milton Keynes and Cambridge. 'It seemed like the perfect location,' said Kane Emerson, one of the UK Day One report's two authors. 'We were motivated by our strong feeling that new homes should be well located for transport.' Emerson, who is also the head of housing at the Yimby Alliance ('Yes, in my back yard'), added: 'The government speaks a lot about economic growth – and if you look at where homes will deliver the most growth, it's near where the average earnings to house price ratio is at its highest – essentially those places with really good opportunities such as Oxford, Cambridge and London.' Developers had already spotted the potential. About 850 hectares (2,100 acres) of the land around Tempsford is optioned by Urban&Civic, a developer owned by the Wellcome Trust. The case for Tempsford improves further, the UK Day One report said, with a tax or other mechanism to claim some of the massive uplift in land value for the state. 'The agricultural price per hectare is about £35,000,' Emerson said. 'Once you get planning permission you are looking at £3m per hectare. The government should be capturing a significant chunk of that – it's kind of free money.' Emerson's co-author, Samuel Hughes, is an editor at Works in Progress magazine. He said this money could finance long-desired upgrades to the East Coast main line: expanding the King's Cross terminus and relieving the bottleneck at Welwyn – where four tracks become two, forcing high-speed and stopping services on to the same lines. 'The two big questions are over land value capture and scale,' Hughes said. 'Is it 10,000 or 100,000 dwellings?' After visiting the village, he still favours the latter. 'The residents were remarkably polite to me, all things considered,' he said. 'Unfortunately, there is an overwhelming case for building at Tempsford.' The future for Tempsford may well depend on the government-commissioned new towns taskforce, which is due to report in September. But others concur that going big beats small, scattered areas of new homes. Steve Chambers is the director of the charity Transport for New Homes. He has visited plenty of housing developments that don't work. 'We term them cowpat estates – plonked in the fields,' he said. 'Every single trip they generate is in the car, in the vast majority of cases. If it's remote, it needs to be big enough to support amenities – you're talking about tens of thousands of homes. 'What we like about the new towns plan is the scale. They really do have the potential because they can support having a high street, a bus service … And Tempsford on those two rail lines will effectively be a transport node. But it has to be built at scale if it is to be successful.' Massive urban development still feels a long way away in the Wheatsheaf, where a tank of racing snails takes pride of place. Looking across the road, over fields that lead to the river Ouse, and his own Tudor house, Sutton said: 'I remember as a lad going down the A1, through this village that was cut in two, thinking that's a weird place. 'Yes, it is a weird place. But I love it.' A neighbour pulled up, and wound down the window of his electric Porsche. He was sceptical that widespread housing could come to this side of the village, having previously put sandbags out to protect his own home from the flooding river. But across the A1, he reckoned, 20,000 homes were a given. How did that make him feel? 'It's progress,' he said, sombrely, before brightening: 'I'll be in there,' he added, pointing to the nearby graveyard, 'long before it happens'.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘We have to move': historic village of Tempsford reels from plan to swell its 600 residents to 350,000
This is – they tell you in Tempsford – where Boudicca rallied against the Romans. Where the early English kings fought off the Danes and where Churchill launched secret flights to aid resistance fighters keeping the Nazis at bay. But the historic earthworks, wheatfields and RAF base of Tempsford may yet prove no match for a chancellor bent on housebuilding and growth, armed with thinktank reports and a 10-year infrastructure strategy. Before Rachel Reeves announced plans to accelerate a 'growth arc' between Oxford and Cambridge, the name of this tiny Bedfordshire village was likely unknown to most. Then, last month, the government confirmed plans to make it the site of a new railway station, where the planned East West Rail linking the university cities will meet the East Coast mainline from London. Tempsford could be an appealing commuter base for workers in any of those cities, but some see more potential still. As Labour came to power pledging 1.5 million new homes, a report from UK Day One urged that they should be built as new towns. And there was one obvious location. It was, said David Sutton, the chair of the parish council and landlord of the village pub, quite a moment when the 600 residents of Tempsford learned of plans to swell their ranks to 350,000 people. A previous local Bedfordshire plan had identified possible development opportunities, and the county has seen plenty of fields give way to housing estates, solar farms and wind turbines. But, Sutton said: 'There had been talk of 10,000 or 20,000 houses, then out of nowhere came this 350,000 [people] figure.' He said local reaction ranged 'from apathy, saying, 'well, nothing's happened yet,' to 'we have to move away.'' The post-war new towns of Stevenage and Welwyn, and the success story of the 1960s wave, Milton Keynes, are all relatively nearby. But as they thrived, Tempsford saw its century-old station axed in the Beeching cuts, and the expanded A1 road cut the settlement in two. On the east side of this division is Station Road, ending in a level crossing where East Coast main line trains whizz between London and Edinburgh. To the west is the pub, various Tudor buildings and the church. Union jacks fly over centuries-old thatched cottages and – if you can ignore the sound of the A1, tucked out of sight behind strategically placed trees – the rural England vibes are strong. Sutton's pub, the Wheatsheaf, reopened last year, and claims a history dating back at least as far as a coaching house on the site in the early 16th century. 'There's an element of being the only traditional pub in a city of hundreds of thousands of people that isn't all bad,' Sutton said. 'Milton Keynes shows how it could be done. But it isn't pretty.' The neighbouring village, Roxton, is already seeing development and could be swallowed up by the new town. Behind the bar of the Wheatsheaf, Fiona Nicholl said she recently sold her home in Roxton to move to Tempsford. 'I used to look out of my windows and see fields,' she said. 'Then I watched the road and houses grow up ... All this rural land disappeared. 'It just doesn't make any sense – it's just taking away the beauty of a rural area. The amount of stress it puts on the whole community is mad.' Roxton residents have just lost a planning appeal to stop a development that was admitted to be environmentally damaging. 'But that didn't outweigh the benefits of new housing,' said Deborah Jackson, a Wheatsheaf regular. 'If a council hasn't met its housing need, then the planners can ride roughshod over the rest.' It is very much the direction of travel, as the new Labour government has signalled, to favour the builders over the blockers. And Tempsford, unlike many new developments, will at least be well connected. As well as the promised new train station, work is underway to reshape the nearby Black Cat roundabout. Part of a £1bn investment by National Highways, this will complete the dual carriageway between Milton Keynes and Cambridge. 'It seemed like the perfect location,' said Kane Emerson, one of the UK Day One report's two authors. 'We were motivated by our strong feeling that new homes should be well located for transport.' Emerson, who is also the head of housing at the Yimby Alliance ('Yes, in my back yard'), added: 'The government speaks a lot about economic growth – and if you look at where homes will deliver the most growth, it's near where the average earnings to house price ratio is at its highest – essentially those places with really good opportunities such as Oxford, Cambridge and London.' Developers had already spotted the potential. About 850 hectares (2,100 acres) of the land around Tempsford is optioned by Urban&Civic, a developer owned by the Wellcome Trust. The case for Tempsford improves further, the UK Day One report said, with a tax or other mechanism to claim some of the massive uplift in land value for the state. 'The agricultural price per hectare is about £35,000,' Emerson said. 'Once you get planning permission you are looking at £3m per hectare. The government should be capturing a significant chunk of that – it's kind of free money.' Emerson's co-author, Samuel Hughes, is an editor at Works in Progress magazine. He said this money could finance long-desired upgrades to the East Coast main line: expanding the King's Cross terminus and relieving the bottleneck at Welwyn – where four tracks become two, forcing high-speed and stopping services on to the same lines. 'The two big questions are over land value capture and scale,' Hughes said. 'Is it 10,000 or 100,000 dwellings?' After visiting the village, he still favours the latter. 'The residents were remarkably polite to me, all things considered,' he said. 'Unfortunately, there is an overwhelming case for building at Tempsford.' The future for Tempsford may well depend on the government-commissioned new towns taskforce, which is due to report in September. But others concur that going big beats small, scattered areas of new homes. Steve Chambers is the director of the charity Transport for New Homes. He has visited plenty of housing developments that don't work. 'We term them cowpat estates – plonked in the fields,' he said. 'Every single trip they generate is in the car, in the vast majority of cases. If it's remote, it needs to be big enough to support amenities – you're talking about tens of thousands of homes. 'What we like about the new towns plan is the scale. They really do have the potential because they can support having a high street, a bus service … And Tempsford on those two rail lines will effectively be a transport node. But it has to be built at scale if it is to be successful.' Massive urban development still feels a long way away in the Wheatsheaf, where a tank of racing snails takes pride of place. Looking across the road, over fields that lead to the river Ouse, and his own Tudor house, Sutton said: 'I remember as a lad going down the A1, through this village that was cut in two, thinking that's a weird place. 'Yes, it is a weird place. But I love it.' A neighbour pulled up, and wound down the window of his electric Porsche. He was sceptical that widespread housing could come to this side of the village, having previously put sandbags out to protect his own home from the flooding river. But across the A1, he reckoned, 20,000 homes were a given. How did that make him feel? 'It's progress,' he said, sombrely, before brightening: 'I'll be in there,' he added, pointing to the nearby graveyard, 'long before it happens'.
BBC News
04-07-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Government 'moving goalposts' on Bicester level crossing, MP says
The government has "moved the goalposts" in its response to calls for an underpass to be installed at a busy level crossing, an MP has than 4,500 people signed a petition calling for any replacement of the level crossing at London Road in Bicester to include access for cars, as well as for cyclists and its response, the Department for Transport said vehicular access to any crossing replacement would be "subject to both affordability and feasibility".Callum Miller, the MP for the north Oxfordshire market town, said the response - and in particular the suggestion of a footbridge - was "shameful". The crossing is set to be closed on safety grounds when the East West Rail (EWR) line becomes fully operational but residents previously said they feared this would see the town "cut in two."The new EWR service will connect Oxford, Milton Keynes, Bedford and Cambridge and is due to be opened to passengers in the early 2030s. "People in Bicester have been clear and consistent: we want a short, safe underpass than can accommodate car users as well as cyclists and pedestrians," Mr Miller Liberal Democrat MP said he had held "constructive discussions" with EWR and Network Rail about how to mitigate the closure, and "at no point was a pedestrian bridge seriously proposed"."To see it now reappear as an option is shameful and feels like the government and East West Rail are moving the goalposts on local residents," he said. In its response to the petition, the Department for Transport said it "recognises that there are strong views locally in Bicester about closing the crossing and the concerns felt by local people that closing the crossing could damage connectivity and lengthen journey times for motorists".It said EWR was "considering an accessible pedestrian overbridge or underpass to provide a suitable replacement crossing for pedestrians, cyclists, and other non-motorised users of the crossing"."It is also considering how vehicle traffic might be re-routed via existing roads," the response government department, which is headed by Heidi Alexander, added that EWR would "present a single option solution for further consultation at a future statutory consultation". You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
BBC News
18-06-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Man expected to lead NRW has Wales knowledge questioned
Senedd members have questioned whether the man lined up to oversee Wales' environmental quango knows enough about the members of the climate change committee backed Nilesh Sachdev's appointment as chair of Natural Resources Wales (NRW).But they had concerns "in a number of areas", including his "lack of knowledge and experience of working in Wales".The Welsh government said it would "carefully consider" the report before making a final decision on his appointment. Deputy First Minister Huw Irranca-Davies chose Mr Sachdev as his preferred candidate for the job, which pays £67,600 for at least 104 days work a questioning him about the role, the committee noted his "impressive CV" and "long-standing engagement with environmental issues".In a report, the committee says his background in the public and private sector "suggests that he has the management and governance experience for a role of this stature".But it also calls for a "rapid reassessment of his current commitments" to make sure he can devote enough time to NRW. 'Challenging role' The former senior executive at Tesco and Sainsbury's already holds other positions, including as chair of East West Rail, which is building a new line between Oxford and Cambridge. He is to become the chair of the University of Warwick next month."The committee was also concerned by a lack of knowledge and experience of working within Wales and the social fabric of the country, its people and organisations," the report adds."This is a challenging role, and we believe Mr Sachdev must continue to familiarise himself with the ecosystem in which he will be working."At the committee, Mr Sachdev said he had some "loose, but they're very, very good connections" to Wales through his family and work."In my career as a shopkeeper, I built most of the Tesco and Sainsbury's stores you will see around Wales, so I've got lots of connections in that way," he also said he had recently moved to Bristol "which is only an hour away", and that he wanted to "play a part in a community I dearly respect and have an affection for, in an area I deeply care about".In a questionnaire, Mr Sachdev said: "I am confident I can dedicate the time and focus necessary to fulfil the responsibilities of chair of NRW."Despite the concerns "a majority of the committee, felt that, on balance, the appointment should be endorsed".The Welsh government welcomed the "thorough scrutiny" of the committee."Following the pre-appointment hearing, the deputy first minister will carefully consider the committee's report before making a final decision on the appointment," a spokesperson is responsible for managing forests, responding to floods and dealing with month, the committee raised serious concerns about an NRW decision to respond to fewer "low category pollution incidents".At the time NRW said it had gone through "a significant period of change and challenge for our organisation, as we live within the resources available to us".Mr Sachdev was approached for comment.
BBC News
16-06-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Buckinghamshire Council leader calls for Aylesbury EW rail link
A council leader has said the government was "really short-sighted" for not approving a link to connect the East West Rail route with Steven Broadbent from Buckinghamshire Council said they had "refused to give us that connection" despite £2.5bn being allocated to the project in the latest Spending Natalie Wheble, from EW Rail, said the link was "not in scope at the moment" but added it was "making sure the design does not prevent it" if the business case Department for Transport said they were "committed to delivering transport infrastructure that will boost growth across the country" but that "all schemes must maximise value for money". The first part of the line, between Oxford and Milton Keynes, was due to open later this year. It will eventually reach is the latest in a line of politicians who called for Aylesbury to be linked via the newly built Winslow 2021, the town's former Conservative MP, Rob Butler, secured an Adjournment debate to discuss the spur. Last November, the Labour MP for Aylesbury, Laura Kyrke-Smith, confirmed she had raised the issue with the Transport Secretary. She said the spur "would bring great economic and social benefit to Aylesbury, to the region and beyond". Now Broadbent told the BBC that £15bn of transport-related money had been "literally been carved for the Midlands and the North" in the government's review, while "we are sitting here in Aylesbury and other towns which were heavily congested".He urged the government to give the county "some of that funding in order for our infrastructure to be upgraded".He added that "at the moment you have to jump in the car or take a bus" if you want to travel from Aylesbury to Winslow. Natalie Wheble, director of communications at East West Rail, spoke with Andy Collins on the BBC Three Counties Radio breakfast said the government set out where they wanted the rail line to go based on a business case and "at the moment, the Aylesbury spur is not in there".She added that "we understand the appetite [for the spur] and what we are doing is making sure we are not preventing it from happening" if the business case also said that the £2.5bn allocated to the project by the government would enable them "to operate on a daily basis during the spending review period, so it is not extra money". Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
