The fallout from the mismanagement of HS2 by this Tory government continues with news that Alstom is to mothball the historic Litchurch Lane train factory in Derby – the recently appointed home of Great British Railways.
In correspondence first reported in The Times Alstom blamed the government for the closure of this strategic national asset as it cited a string of broken government commitments. In a further blow to the competence of the government the company cited ten months of unsuccessful talks with Transport Secretary Mark Harper.
The Derby plant is considered by many to be a strategic national asset. Railway building began at Derby Works in 1840, when the North Midland Railway, the Midland Counties Railway and the Birmingham and Derby Railway set up the engine sheds. Its operations continued through the creation of the Midland Railway, subsequently the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, LMS, and eventually into British Rail. After Privatisation, it became part of BREL, British Railways Engineering Limited before being sold to Bombardier of Canada who finally offloaded it to Alstom in 2021. That is some legacy to be lost.
The closure of this plant is clearly related to the delays in HS2, with a two-year delay to the HS2 rolling stock leaving the site with no work for several years. Alstom had suggested that essential investment in the railway, such as add-ons to existing contracts and refurbishments to other train fleets, could be approved in order to keep the plant alive but the government appears to have refused to do so – again preferring tax cuts to essential investment.
An obvious example of the work that could have been awarded to the Derby factory is the construction of extra trains and carriages for the Chiltern Railway line operating out of Marylebone. Since the opening of a route to Oxford using the line, in addition to the existing service to Birmingham, the service has been chronically short of rolling stock leading to perennial overcrowding. The Derby factory had after all been used to produce the last new trains for Chiltern, the Class 168 Clubmans. A contract to provide new trains and carriages would have been perfect both to save the train factory and improve an increasingly dire commuter experience, yet it was quietly shelved by the government a couple of years ago.
A move to do this work or other contracts like it is clearly better for U.K. PLC in the long run as the likely result of these events is that when the HS2 trains are finally built the work is now highly likely to be done one of Alstom’s other facilities elsewhere in Europe rather than in Derby.
This save-a-penny-to-spend-a-pound foolishness is costing us all dear – taxpayers paying more, workers losing their jobs – the sort of high-skilled engineering jobs that the government says it wants to attract – and commuters putting up with an increasingly dire service.
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