PLANS for re-opening a railway station in Wellington took a giant step forward last week as Transport Secretary Grant Shapps announced on live television his backing for the project.

Mr Shapps spoke about the Wellington scheme during one of the Government’s daily Covid-19 briefings from Downing Street last weekend.

He said it was one of ten projects nationwide to have been approved for a grant of up to £50,000 from the Government’s ‘Beeching Reversal Fund’.

The £500,000 fund was launched in January to help towns such as Wellington which were cut off from the railway network in the 1960s as a result of a Government-commissioned report by Lord Beeching.

Wellington’s money will come from the Restoring Your Railway ‘Ideas Fund’ used to develop proposals to?build or re-open?railway lines and stations. It is part of the Government’s plans to help reconnect communities across the country and level up opportunities for people in isolated areas by increasing their access to jobs and training as the country recovers from the coronavirus emergency.

The grant will be shared with Cullompton, in Devon, which has been developing its own new station plans in tandem with Wellington.

The Ideas Fund grant will help pay for transport and economic studies to feed into a strategic outline business case (SOBC) which would be used to apply for even larger grants to take the two projects further forward.

For the full story see this week’s Wellington Weekly News.