Northern Rail cancels plans to remove direct rail services

The train operator, Northern delivered an early Christmas present this week when they announced at a meeting of the Council’s Environment & Regeneration sub-committee that they will not be implementing their initial proposal to remove the direct train services from Beverley to Doncaster and Sheffield as part of their May 2018 timetable changes.

Representatives from the train operator attended the meeting at County Hall to make the announcement in a presentation to Councillors which explained about the service enhancements they will be making over the coming years. The company said that they had responded positively to comments from the Council and other stakeholders, and had changed their minds over the idea to scrap the direct services which would have meant people changing trains at Hull and waiting for 25 minutes for an onward connection.

Councillor Denis Healy, who organised a campaign, including a 500 name petition earlier this year to ask the company to think again, formally thanked Northern at the meeting for listening to the public’s concerns and said they had “done the right thing.”

Councillor Healy said; “I am really grateful to Northern  for changing their minds over this and for listening to the general public and their customers. We worked hard to persuade them to listen to public concerns, and now we should put ourselves out to say ‘thank you.’  The original proposal would have been extremely inconvenient for our residents if it had been implemented, and would have reduced Beverley’s connectivity to the rest of the region and the wider country even further.

"This also shows the power of public opinion, and demonstrates that when people make their voices heard, they can make change happen. So on behalf of the people of Beverley, I want to say Merry Christmas to Northern and thanks for listening to us.”