RAILWAY REOPENING BID GATHERS STEAM
Plan for Stoke-to-leek line boosted by £50k funding award
THE reopening of a mothballed North Staffordshire railway line has come a step closer with the awarding of £50,000 of government funding.
Council chiefs will spend the money on a feasibility study into the restoration of the Stoke-toleek line – more than 60 years after the last passenger services ran along the route.
Stoke-on-trent City Council and Staffordshire Moorlands District Council have been successful in their second bid for support from the government’s Restoring Your Railway Fund, after their first attempt hit the buffers last year.
No further government funding is guaranteed at this stage and it is not yet known how much it will cost to restore the railway.
But council leaders and local MPS believe that reopening the line would deliver a major economic boost to both Stokeon-trent and the Staffordshire Moorlands, while easing road congestion.
Passenger services between Stoke-on-trent and Leek ended in 1956, with the station closing completely in 1970.
Staffordshire Moorlands MP Karen Bradley is set to chair a delivery board which will commission a study into the options for reopening the line.
The board will consider proposals for intermediate stops at Endon, Milton, Birches Head/ Abbey Hulton, Bucknall and Fenton Manor.
Ms Bradley said: “I am delighted. We have done everything we can to make our united case for the Stoke-leek line – what I prefer to call the Leek-stoke line – and bring the Queen of the Moorlands back onto the rail network.
“It is extremely important that we consider all the possibilities for how we do this, and fully investigate how much it might cost.
“It is, perhaps, the last chance we will get to reopen the mothballed line to public transport use.”
Stoke-on-trent Central MP Jo Gideon added: “A public transport revolution is what Stoke-on-trent needs, and we are determined to deliver one.
“We worked together to secure £29 million from the Transforming Cities Fund (TCF), currently being delivered. Now we have worked together to win funding for a proper study into how we can reconnect communities from Leek, and through the city, to Stoke station – which is being improved as a key public transport interchange under the TCF.”
A separate bid to reopen Meir railway station, which closed in the Beeching cuts, has already reached the feasibility study stage. The city council received £37,500 for the project last year.
Stoke-on-trent South MP Jack Brereton, who has been involved in both bids, said: “Our revised bid took a great deal of work and I am so pleased it has been successful.”