IT sounds slightly ridiculous, doesn’t it?

We want £42m to move a perfectly good railway station 50 yards to the left. Actually, it sounds utterly ridiculous.

However, that is the ask we are making of Network Rail and their slightly North Korean sounding five-year plan, and for very good reasons.

It seems like the argument has been won over developing a high-speed rail network for the UK.

It is being sold to the population on the basis they will be able to get to London or Birmingham 20 minutes faster.

This has met with a bit of a lukewarm reaction from the public who aren’t entirely convinced it’s a great use of £42bn.

If the Government had said, ‘we have an ageing railway, which needs to be upgraded, it will cost around the same to either upgrade the old one and close all the main lines every weekend for the next five years or build a brand new high-tech one’, there might have been a bit more applause for the policy.

But it is for that reason we need the money and to move the station 50 yards.

Now Darlington is a perfectly good station, it serves the town well and the wider area well, but high-speed line stations can’t involve moving off the main line, which trains have to do as they need to be in and out quickly to maintain journey times.

If Darlington station isn’t fit for purpose when HS2 arrives, there will be no stop for the Tees Valley and trains will run straight past us between York and Newcastle.

It will then be difficult to convince businesses who need access to major cities to stay here and it will be very difficult to attract investors when we can’t say we are important enough for the trains to stop here.

It could also send the message to the people we want to build a career here that there are other places with better connections.

That is why the Chamber is supporting the council and the Tees Valley Combined Authority in what sounds, on the face of it, a huge ask.

£42m sounds like a lot of money but set against the billions promised for HS2 or Crossrail, it doesn’t seem that much and the returns it will bring on investment are significant, as was made clear at the launch.

However, so are the risks if we don’t get it.

Rachel Anderson is head of policy and representation at the North East England Chamber of Commerce