Over several months Luke has worked with residents, council officers and other elected representatives to revive the plan to restore passenger rail to East Cleveland – with a petition which gathered hundreds of signatures from the villages.

The campaign has called on the Tees Valley Combined Authority to commit to using its newly allocated HS2 monies to dramatically improve East Cleveland train connectivity. Today (13 January 2024) the Tees Valley Mayor has agreed to commit funds to a new feasibility study on this.

Luke said: “This is great news, and a credit to all those across our communities who have been campaigning on this issue for years. It’s something that’s personal to me, having grown up in Brotton and seen how our transport has been cut back – that’s why I’ve been campaigning for better buses and rail to East Cleveland. Thank you to everyone who signed my petition. It’s about getting people access to jobs and services, and getting our economy moving.

Now we need to make sure it gets delivered – along with proper improvements to our bus network too. I’ll be keeping the pressure on all our leaders locally to get this done.”