Yorkshire Children's Centre loses car park due to TransPennine Route upgrade

Yorkshire Children’s Centre (YCC) based at Brian Jackson House in Huddersfield, has lost its car park as Network Rail begins working on the TransPennine Route upgrade. The redevelopment works began on May 8.

The former car park is to the rear of the Brian Jackson House and has been used by the charity for the past 35 years. However, Network Rail owns the site and has taken it back now that works have commenced.

The move means that YCC has restricted rights to access the back of their building – for prearranged deliveries only. This access was previously used for deliveries, staff parking, and an entrance for service users among many other things.

As a result, difficulties have arisen making it more difficult to deliver the charity’s services. The charity is appealing to any individuals or local organisations who know of any free parking opportunities or have a few parking spaces to spare close to the Brian Jackson House building to get in touch with them.

CEO Mark Farmer said: “We completely support the upgrade to the railway service for Huddersfield, as part of the wider regeneration of the town and wider Kirklees. We have worked closely with Network Rail and its partners to maintain some access but are looking for alternative parking arrangements to help our employees and building users.”

YCC’s head of children and family services, Catherine McKenzie, added: “In terms of service delivery, we have already been impacted by simple things such as access into the building which has affected delivery of our much-needed child safety equipment. This has resulted in precious staff time being utilised to make alternative arrangements rather than spending time supporting families.”

YCC continues to operate within Brian Jackson House including delivering services on-site such as stay and play, child contact and domestic abuse perpetrator programme work.

The TransPennine Route Upgrade is a major multi-billion-pound scheme that will electrify the line between Manchester, Huddersfield, Leeds and York. Huddersfield station will be getting a futuristic new look as part of the plans and there will be major renovations at Deighton, Mirfield and Ravensthorpe stations.

According to TransPennine Express, this will see faster and more dependable journeys with more trains to choose from. However, the vast scale of the improvement works will see disruption over several years.