Brockley Station improvements could be brought forward to 2011

Brockley's representative on the London Assembly, Darren Johnson, has enjoyed some early success with his campaign to bring forward the plans to make Brockley Station fully accessible.

TfL has scheduled the work, which would introduce step-free access on both platforms and provide a number of smaller improvements, to be completed by no later than 2015 - two years later than originally hoped. The development of Brockley Common, which created a wheelchair-friendly ramp on the east side of the station, was designed in anticipation of this work.

Johnson is pushing for the timetable to be accelerated, to bring Brockley in to line with some of the other stations along the route of the new East London Line. He told Brockley Central:

"My aim is to get the Mayor and the Department for Transport to reach agreement on bringing it forward to 2011."

Earlier this week, this campaign enjoyed some success, when his question during the Mayor's Question Time, elicited the following response:

"TfL London Rail have made a tranche of bids for Access for All Small Schemes funding for 8 of these [former Southern] stations. These are relatively small scale measures to make the station DDA compliant and would complement the DfT ‘step free’ scheme."

By recognising that this is a relatively small-scale project, the Mayor signalled that there may be some scope to deliver these improvements earlier.

In a statement, Darren Johnson said:

"Local community groups were dismayed to hear that Brockley Station would not be receiving accessibility improvements at the same time as other local stations that have come under the control of TfL. I hope that the Mayor of London and the Department for Transport can work together to ensure Brockley is not left behind."