Michael has demanded the Transport Secretary\u2019s assurance that the new Thameslink fast service will be delivered in full, following fresh fears that the future express service would be delayed \u201cindefinitely\u201d.<\/p>\n
The new link \u2013 to run from Maidstone East through Swanley and Otford to the City \u2013 was set to begin at the end of this year.\u00a0 But the start date was postponed until at least December 2019.<\/p>\n
Worse still, the Sevenoaks MP discovered that the tendering documents for the new South East franchise operator asked for a cost analysis of the \u201cindefinite\u201d delay of the service.<\/p>\n
He warned that this spelled bad news for families and businesses in his constituency and requested an immediate meeting with the Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, which was granted.<\/p>\n
Following the meeting, Michael said: \u201cThe Transport Secretary has committed to investigating why this paragraph was included in the Invitation to Tender.\u00a0 He has also undertaken to provide further reassurance that the fast service will commence in December 2019 and will not be further postponed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michael has demanded the Transport Secretary\u2019s assurance that the new Thameslink fast service will be delivered in full, following fresh fears that the future express service would be delayed \u201cindefinitely\u201d. The new link \u2013 to run from Maidstone East through Swanley and Otford to the City \u2013 was set to begin at the end of … Continue reading “MP Demands Transport Secretary\u2019s Assurance”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[709,743,561,723,497,96,517,12,447,591],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelfallon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelfallon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelfallon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelfallon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelfallon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelfallon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2194,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelfallon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192\/revisions\/2194"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelfallon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelfallon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelfallon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelfallon.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}