A group of residents and Cllr Nicola Turner, travelled to London on Tuesday 6^th Sep to meet Norman Baker MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport, to present to him the residents petition of almost 1000 signatures.

 The petition calls on Network Rail to fix the steps and make them safe. We also called for a health and safety inspection of the steps and measures to make them safe in the short term.

 Cllr Nicola Turner (Colne Valley ward) said: I have been approached by many residents about the problems faced by them.  Many have said they do not use the station because of the dangerous conditions.  I can see for myself the difficulties faced by disabled visitors, the elderly and also parents with pushchairs.

 I feel that improved access to the station can only be positive in terms of drawing in visitors, who may have otherwise been put off by the current dangerous state. As a group, we asked the Minister to look into using Government monies, already earmarked for improving access to stations, to be used at Marsden to install a footbridge and ramped access for Platforms 1 and 2.

 Residents considered it was a “good” meeting and are looking forward to hearing from Norman in due course. The Minister was well briefed and already had quite a lot of information about the station. He said he would ask the Office of Rail Regulation (the railway regulator) to look into the immediate safety concerns.

 He also told us that Marsden was roughly half way down the list for access upgrading approx 1200^th out of 2500 stations. He agreed to ask the people dealing with this project to look into the feasibility of the ramped access and report back to me in the near future.”

 Retired university lecturer Dr Richard Etheridge who was also in attendance has been calling for Marsden railway station to be brought up to modern standards for some time now. His plea to rail bosses came after his wife Pam fell while descending the steps at the station to catch a train November 2010.