COLNE-SKIPTON RAIL REOPENING ON CURRICULUM FOR CRAVEN STUDENTS
Students from Craven College are on board to boost the campaign to reopen the missing,12-mile rail link between Colne and Skipton.
At a members’ meeting in Skipton (14 September), the Skipton East Lancashire Rail Action
Partnership (SELRAP) announced that students from the college will be helping build public
awareness of the urgent need for the reopening.
Starting this term, the campaign will be a focus for second year Business and Social Media/
Marketing students. This will include helping publicise a petition, to be launched on 10 October.
Andy Dixon, SELRAP’s chair, said: “This is a huge boost for our campaign. The Colne-Skipton
Line’s reopening will bring transformational benefits for young people across the North,
providing much-needed access to work, education and leisure opportunities, so it’s great to
involve some of them in making it a reality.”
Duncan Bulloch, assistant principal (curriculum & skills) at Craven College, commented: “A
quarter of our students live in East Lancashire, so improving public transport links over the
border is a priority for us.
“The students are already working up their ideas, particularly how the SELRAP campaign can
engage more younger people. It’s a wonderful opportunity for them to get hands-on experience on such an important, real-life project.”
The SELRAP members’ meeting on 14 September also heard that Skipton branch of the RMT
union has unanimously passed a motion calling on the Department for Transport and regional authorities to allocate the necessary capital funding to advance construction of the Colne-Skipton Line “without delay.”
The guest speaker at the meeting was Theo Morgan Lundie, a Phd researcher from Lancaster University, specialising in sustainable public transport, who outlined the full social, economic and environmental benefits that the Colne-Skipton Line reopening would bring. He highlighted that passenger use of similar lines around the country has surpassed government predictions by up to 400 per cent.
