A SCRUTINY committee has thrown its backing behind the campaign to get Bradford on the high-speed rail network, with a station in the city centre.

Bradford Council’s environment and waste overview and scrutiny committee heard an update on plans to improve rail services in the district, including the push to get Bradford onto the planned high-speed link between Leeds and Manchester, dubbed Northern Powerhouse Rail.

And the committee called on transport chiefs to be more “optimistic” when setting out the potential economic benefits of such a stop.

Committee member Councillor Andrew Thornton (Lab, Royds) said Northern Powerhouse Rail could be “a real game-changer” for Bradford but he had concerns that a paper-based cost-benefit analysis may not work in its favour.

He said: “I think perhaps we need to be more optimistic.”

Cllr Thornton gave the example of the new rail station at Apperley Bridge, saying it had been far more popular than expected.

Officers from Bradford Council and the West Yorkshire Combined Authority said traditional cost-benefit calculations often favoured schemes in London at the expense of those in the north.

They said the Government was next week expected to meet with working group Transport for the North (TfN) to discuss creating a cost-benefit analysis that would be better suited to the north of England.

Councillor Alex Ross-Shaw, who leads on planning and transport matters at Bradford Council, said they were making the argument that they needed to look beyond simply weighing up the costs and benefits and “take a wider view and think of the added value, almost a place-making approach”.

He said campaigners were particularly stressing the need to improve the links between Leeds and Bradford.

TfN has been commissioned to look into options for the route, before making recommendations to the Government.

This week, it published a spring report giving an update on its work.

This said it would identify by this summer how the planned Northern Powerhouse Rail network could link in with the HS2 lines which will connect London with Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield.

It will then “identify a number of feasible engineering options” for Northern Powerhouse Rail and identify preferred options by 2017 or 2018.

Nigel Foster, of TfN, said this may not happen until the end of 2018.

But he told the Telegraph & Argus that TfN appreciated Bradford’s importance.

He said: “Bradford is an important city. It has a big population, a growing population and a young population and it is not just important in the north of England, it is important nationally as an economic centre.”