Corsham Railway Station

August 2024 Update

There has been very little progress since Wiltshire Council submitted the bid for Corsham Station in November 2022. We requested an update from DfT in January 2024 and were told: ‘We thank you for your support for the scheme and continued patience. The Department is not yet in a position to feedback on next steps for the scheme, but hopes to be able to do so in due course’.

Since then we’ve had a general election and announcement that the Restoring Your Railways scheme was being cut. There is, however, an opportunity for the Transport Secretary to review individual schemes as part of the spending review.

Town Council members of the Town Team met on 9 August to agree next steps.

Since that meeting, we have:

• Contacted Wiltshire Council to see who will be leading the project now that others have left the organisation. Also to see what is meant by WC’s commitment to the rail projects as quoted by Cllr Tamara Reay.
• Met Sarah Gibson MP who is very happy to be the sponsoring MP for the bid.
• Written to the Transport Secretary to see how we can get the RYR bid reconsidered as part of their review.
• Asked for an update from the Station Enhancements Portfolio Manager at DfT – He confirmed that all infrastructure projects on their books, RYR and otherwise, would now go into the Transport Review for consideration for other funding. He was unable to confirm timescales but had been told it would be soon.  

We will also be revisiting Neighborhood Plan Transport policy, in particular evidence regarding the safeguarded land to ensure/check it is still valid.

We will provide further updates as and when we hear anything helpful.

January 2024 Update

Whilst there is still no news on the outcome of the Strategic Outline Business Case for a new Railway Station at Corsham there is some good news locally. Great Western Railway (GWR) says it plans to run direct services between Bristol and Oxford for the first time in twenty years. If approved by the Department for Transport and Network Rail the trail will be operational from mid September until December and would include two Saturday Services. 

History

Corsham Railway Station closed in January 1965 as part of the Beeching cuts.

Corsham Town Team which includes representatives from Corsham Town Council, Wiltshire Council, Corsham Civic Society, TransWilts, MOD Corsham, Bath Spa University, local residents and our local MP Michelle Donelan, is working towards a new station in Corsham.

In autumn 2021 a Wiltshire Council bid to the Department for Transport (DfT) for funding to develop a feasibility study for a new station in Corsham, as part of the Restoring Your Railway Ideas Fund, was approved and is on track to progress to the next stage of the process.

A Strategic Outline Business Case (SOBC) is being produced and is the first stage of the DfT’s business case process. The SOBC will set out more details on the proposed project and the case for building a new station, and how the plans would fit strategically into local priorities and wider government transport ambitions.

The SOBC was submitted to the DfT in mid-November and a decision is expected in 2023. Wiltshire Council’s Press Release is available in the latest news section of this website.