Representation by David Thompson
- Date submitted
- 22 June 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
I am opposed to the building of the Hinckley Rail Freight Interchange for a number of reasons. My key concerns to date are: -Utilisation of an already highly utilised rail link. The link between Hinckley and Birmingham, and to London from Nuneaton is crucial to my wife's livelihood and already suffers great passenger disruption when there are issues with freight services. Increasing the freight on the line is likely to jeopardize this further or in the worst case force the removal of vital passenger services. It will also increase the use of the level crossings disrupting the traffic and increasing the exposure to danger at the local ungated crossings -Increased heavy goods traffic through our villages. It is highly unlikely that the M69 slip roads will be the only approach for goods vehicles to the interchange and the only other available route is through the villages, causing congestion, local pollution and greater danger to children in the village -Increased commuter traffic. The jobs provided by the Interchange are clearly not intended for the local community, as incredibly low levels of unemployment in the area show that the jobs are not needed here. This means workers will be commuting through our villages, also increasing traffic and congestion. -Noise and Light Pollution. Late activities loading and unloading goods at the interchange will be easily heard from the nearby villages and the large amount of artificial light produced will be clearly visible staining the sky -Removal of a local area of beauty and natural wildlife habitat. The interchange is planned to be built over the beautiful Burbage Common site, an accessible area of natural beauty home to native wildlife including many species of bird, bats and larger mammals. This is a beautiful community space that will be removed to provide corporations a freight service already available only a few miles away in either direction with DIRFT being a prime example. -It is an unnecessary service. As mentioned, DIRFT is only a short trip down the A5 away with other interchanges not much further. DIRFT has plenty of capacity available for trains. -The lack of research put into the scheme to address any of the above points, all schemes shown so far have been speculative with no commitment to the design or supporting research and calculation