SOUTHEND 5

[Expressflight]

"They knew about the lack of trains and still decided to invest in the airport."

They certainly knew what the train timetables were at the time when they drew up their development plans for the airport but they definitely did not accept that to be a satisfactory situation going forward. For a long time they thought that they could persuade Greater Anglia to offer earlier and later trains, either by direct negotiation or by lobbying the Department of Transport to put pressure on Network Rail/Greater Anglia to make that possible. It could be said that they were overconfident in the assumption that such an outcome could be easily achieved but it certainly did form part of their business plan that there needed to be earlier and later trains.

My criticism of them is that once it became clear that Network Rail would not reduce the overnight track closure times to allow such additional trains to run they should have taken matters into their own hands and laid on coaches to cover early and late flights. That was still what I hoped might happen at the start of this year but no such arrangement has yet been forthcoming.