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 Since 1969 the population of Uckfield has tripled from 5,000 to 15,000. Planning approval for another 1,800 homes is being sought.
Crowborough has witnessed similar expansion during the same period with its population doubling to 22,000.
Instead of being upgraded to manage this growth, the busy Tunbridge Wells - Lewes corridor has seen its rail connections diminish over the past forty years. Consequently, South Coast towns take the brunt of this ever rising tide of road traffic because there are no longer any train services.
Apart from the obvious exception of the Brighton Line, no equivalent pace of growth has taken place in towns and villages along adjacent rail routes to the Sussex coast (compare Tunbridge Wells - Hastings and Horsham - Littlehampton). Population numbers here have largely stayed the same and these places are not being required to accommodate the Government’s housing quotas.
Previous direct train services such as Sevenoaks-Tonbridge-Uckfield-Brighton; London-Crowborough-Brighton; London-Croydon-Oxted-Tunbridge Wells West were all lost as a direct result of the closure of Uckfield-Lewes.
To make matters even worse, the Wealden District Plan specifically targets Uckfield, Hailsham, Polegate as the towns to take the significant proportion of 10,000 extra homes. The Lewes District Plan is similarly looking to Newhaven and Lewes to absorb its major house building obligations over the next two decades.
Given the high cost of new homes and the low wage economy of East Sussex it is inevitable that commuting to London will substantially increase. At the moment all these South Coast towns will have to rely on additional capacity being found on the Brighton Main Line. Inevitably, the promised extra capacity with more rolling stock and longer trains will quickly be negated as more and more people move into the area.
Newhaven and Seaford remain the only South Coast towns with no all-day direct train services to London - this is because there are no spare paths through Haywards Heath. Only two ‘up’ and one ‘down’ through (splitting) services are provided during the peak.
The solution - extending, redoubling and electrifying the railway between Hurst Green-Uckfield-Lewes to feed directly into Newhaven seems obvious, but even though Network Rail has suggested this in its 2007 Business Plan, such a worthwhile upgrading still awaits a political decision and approval from the Department for Transport.
Unfortunately, the continuing absence of these additional rail links to the South Coast via Uckfield will only encourage further railheading, particularly to the Brighton Main Line.
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