If the government is seeking its next growth success story, it need not look too far. The West London Orbital railway is a shovel-ready scheme that would enable the building of 25,000 homes, the creation of 11,000 jobs and lift some of our London communities most in need out of poverty.
It is a simple proposal: an existing freight rail line that is currently underused would be repurposes into an 18-kilometre London Overground line running between Hounslow and Hendon. It would connect the boroughs of Brent, Barnet, Ealing and Hounslow directly to each other and to Old Oak Common, which is soon to become one of the most important rail interchanges in the country. Its estimated cost of under £1 billion is modest compared with many national rail schemes and the rewards would be great.
Starts on new housing in London remain below what is needed to meet demand, but good transport infrastructure gives developers the confidence to invest. The West London Orbital would stimulate such investment and I know from experience as leader of Brent Council that developers are already keen to build in my borough.
For example, at the College of North West London site in Willesden 1,600 homes are planned and at least 1,100 are proposed for Neasden Goods Yard. Realising the full potential of these schemes depends on the connectivity the new railway would provide. Such connectivity also widen labour markets.
Growth is the government’s central mission. The West London Orbital aligns directly with it. And that growth would not be confined to London. The capital generates roughly 23 percent of the UK’s GDP and has historically returned a substantial net fiscal surplus to the Treasury. When productivity rises in London, our country’s public purse grows fuller accordingly. The supply chains that serve London’s logistics, life sciences and manufacturing sectors stretch across the country, and the tax receipts raised here support public services well beyond the M25.
Yet infrastructure debates are too often framed as a contest between London and the rest of the country. It would be disingenuous to pretend such sentiment has no roots. The United Kingdom remains institutionally Londoncentric: parliament sits here; Whitehall sits here; political power is concentrated here. For many communities beyond the capital, that centralisation has made government feel distant and unresponsive. It is hardly surprising that frustration has, at times, attached itself to London as a place.
But we must not allow that debate to become muddled. London as an institution and London as a population are too often conflated. The result is a caricature of the capital as uniformly as being affluent and insulated against hardship. But as I know as Brent’s leader, and as fellow borough leaders know, this obscures the lived reality of millions of Londoners.
London’s poverty rate has long exceeded the national average. Because the capital’s cost of living is so expensive, a basic standard of living here can need to be as much as to 58 per cent more than elsewhere in the UK. The latest Indices of Multiple Deprivation show that neighbourhoods among the nation’s 10 to 20 per cent most deprived, including Harlesden and Neasden, lie along the proposed West London Orbital corridor.
We know that transport unlocks growth: the Elizabeth line now carries around 800,000 passengers a day, with more than 70,000 homes granted planning permission within a kilometre of its stations. We now know that connectivity is not the reward for growth, but a condition for it.
A big advantage of the West London Orbital is that the spine of the railway already exists. There would be no new tunnels and no starting from scratch. Earlier this month, Transport for London has announced that up to £6.65 million has been agreed to be committed to the next phase of designing the scheme, with Brent, three other boroughs and the Old Oak and Park Royal mayoral development corporation collectively contributing half of it.
Clear government backing is needed now to move from planning to delivery. The West London Orbital is a growth project in the national interest.
Muhammed Butt is leader of Brent Council. Map from TfL.
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