Lymington Brockenhurst Community Rail Partnership
Bobby Lock - Rail Development Officer
The Isle of Wight Community Rail Partnership was launched in 2005, their stakeholders initially being, Island Line (South West Trains) Wightlink and the Isle of Wight Council with Bobby Lock as their Rail Development Officer. Since the launch Bobby has worked on the CRP’s action plan from which many exciting innovative projects have been delivered benefiting stations, the environment, young people and the community Island Line serves.
As a result of the Island CRP’s success, Bobby has been seconded to the newly formed Lymington-Brockenhurst CRP on a Thursday and Friday to replicate projects in Lymington and the New Forest. It therefore made sense given the close working with the Three Rivers Partnership also chaired by the Iow CRP and LB CRP’s Vice Chair; the excellent Nick Farthing, to invite our transport partners Southern Vectis, Red Funnel and Hovertravel to join the board to be able to help facilitate projects for seamless travel and sustainable integrated transport.
To date Lymington-Brockenhurst Community Rail Partnership’s members are;
- South West Trains
- Hampshire County Council
- New Forest District Council
- National Parks Authority
- Brockenhurst College
- Wightlink
- Lymington and Pennington Town Council
- Brockenhurst Parish Council
- New Forest Primary Care Trust
The Chair is Cllr Mel Kendall from Hampshire County Council and Vice Chair is Nick Farthing from SUSTRANS. He is also Chair of the Isle of Wight Community rail Partnership and 3 Rivers Partnership in Southampton.
These are challenging financial times for everyone and expectations to deliver are as high as they were at the start. However with positive partnerships and a shared responsibility to promote the area and our Island for an improved economy and reduced carbon footprint, these are also exciting times.
Bobby is also looking to start friends of Island Line Line, which is essentially a volunteer programme which can look at anything from help to organise events, ways of promoting the line to station adoption schemes which have been initiated on other community rail lines around the country can be viewed here. If you would like to be a part of FOIL please get in touch with Bobby, she would be only too happy for your help.
Four big projects to come for the Island this year include;
- A line guide to cover 20 healthy attractions from the Island, New Forest and Southampton/Southsea/Portsmouth with 2 for 1 offers available with a valid rail ticket.
- Sandown Station regeneration with exciting new tenants.
- A CRP book produced by young people featuring all the CRP projects to date.
- TravelSafe DVD produced by the Carisbrooke TravelSafe Group and The Knowledge Zone.
Also this year Bobby was voted onto the board of Association of Community Rail Partnerships (ACoRP) at the AGM in Plymouth as a director, which will bring to the table a fresh perspective, particularly on community development and as ACoRP put it, “As such Bobby is fast becoming ACoRP’s expert on heritage rolling stock!” in reference to Lymington-Brockenhurst Heritage line and 1938 ex northern line rolling stock on the Isle of Wight!
On the 19th of September ACoRP hosted the annual community rail partnerships awards ceremony at Plymouth Pavilions which saw two of Bobby’s island projects take 1st place, whilst SWT and the Isle of Wight CRP, Lymington-Brockenhurst CRP and 3 Rivers Partnership in Southampton were awarded ‘Overall winner’ for partnership working. Bobby also was awarded 2nd place for most outstanding Rail Development Officer.
South West Trains and their Community Rail Partnerships all in all received 8 awards out of 15 and really cleared the board; something which Bobby is very keen to do again next year with the added benefit of successful projects for LB CRP! Southwest Trains. All the winners can be seen here.
Magazine interview with Bobby Lock