Upminster Station accessibility upgrades take important step forward.

Julia Lopez’s campaign to make Upminster Station’s Platform 6 fully accessible has taken an important step forward after C2C was awarded redirected HS2 funding to progress plans for a ramp or a lift to the platform.

 Julia Lopez, the Conservatives’ parliamentary candidate for Hornchurch and Upminster, has been campaigning since 2018 to make Upminster Station fully accessible for people with mobility issues or travelling with buggies or suitcases. She and local Conservative activists had previously gathered a petition of 1100 residents’ signatures that had been presented to c2c and the Department for Transport, and had met Transport Ministers to pursue the scheme.

On 24 May, the Department for Transport announced that Upminster Station would be awarded a share of the £350m re-purposed HS2 funding through its Access for All programme. The funds will be used to undertake feasibility studies on works to provide step-free access to platform 6 – presently the only platform at the station without it.

 While the campaigner’s first application for funding was unsuccessful, the strength of Mrs Lopez’s local support convinced c2c to continue to back the project. While representing Hornchurch & Upminster in Parliament, Julia collaborated with c2c to support a further bid in 2022. Since then, Mrs Lopez continued to lobby the Department for Transport in support of the bid, most recently in January and April of this year.

Mrs Lopez has also campaigned for Hornchurch Station to have step-free options, however the Mayor of London has never chosen to make the key Havering stop a priority for his share of Access for All money. Thankfully, with Upminster Station being run by c2c, the Mayor’s involvement was not required to get Department for Transport backing in the case of Platform 6. 

 Upminster Station has undergone a series of improvements over the past couple of years, with Mrs Lopez keeping passengers updated on works for a new footbridge and welcoming increases to services this year as the timetable gets back to pre-pandemic frequencies.

 Commenting on the development, Julia Lopez said:

 “I’m absolutely delighted with last week’s announcement that Upminster Station will be receiving funding to progress work to make platform 6 fully accessible. This is an important next step towards ensuring that local people can access the whole station, regardless of their accessibility needs.

Platform six has long stood out as an anomaly within an otherwise accessible corner of the rail network. These works will ensure step-free access from Upminster to Elizabeth Line services to Heathrow Airport, helping not just those with accessibility needs and parents with buggies, but also travellers with heavy bags.

 “This is something which I have been campaigning on for years so seeing progress on this important issue shows that our efforts have made a big difference. It is only right that everyone in Hornchurch & Upminster has access to the full range of public transport options in our area, which is why this announcement is such good news and why we will keep pushing for the Mayor of London to improve stations across the whole constituency”.

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