Crossrail

What do the following have in common?

• West Ham Underground Station
• Romford Central Library
  
• Redbridge Town Hall

Well for a start, they aren't in Brentwood Borough - at all.

Secondly, they are the three sites for the public meetings about Crossrail (yes, I know I'm a bit late blogging on this - the Borough Council issued the press release on July 31st).

I'm not sure what the full impact is going to be - but there surely isn't going to be a huge amount of work being done along the line between Shenfield and Maryland is there? Most of the big engineering work, as far as I can see, is the development of the tunnels and the provisioning of sidings at the terminii of the line.

There's little dispute that I can see that there will be major disruption for residents in the area of Shenfield station - I seem to recall reading that the resident's of Hunters Avenue have been offered compensation on those grounds. I'd also expect that residents of the Borough would also be badly affected by the reduction in car parking spaces during the building work.

Eric Pickles, our local MP, has made clear that at the very least he thinks that the issue of the Eastern terminus being placed at Shenfield should not be set in stone. During that debate, Alistair Darling remarked that he took "the view that [Eric Pickles] wants Crossrail to terminate not at Shenfield but at some point nearer to the city". It must be emphasised that Eric Pickles is certainly reflecting the view of his constituents on this matter.

So why is there no meeting in the Borough that will be badly affected by this change? Are they scared of the local opposition, and hope that by having the nearest meeting in Romford they'll be put off?