Council hopes to bring station back to Welsh village after 60 years

Ted Peskett, local democracy reporter

The leader of a Welsh council said her local authority is still working towards bringing a railway station back to a village where people haven’t been able to catch a train for 60 years.

Vale of Glamorgan Council’s leader, Cllr Lis Burnett, said she hasn’t heard anything different from the Department of Transport from when they said they would help fund a feasibility study for a new railway station in St Athan.

The UK Government’s transport arm said after the general election last summer that it is conducting a review of capital spending.

St Athan’s old railway station shut in 1964 and many residents said they would use the train if a new one was opened in the village.

New homes

One local councillor who we spoke with, Cllr Stephen Haines, said a new station is needed with hundreds of homes having been built in St Athan and more potentially planned for the future.

Cllr Lis Burnett said: “It is another one of those decisions that is completely outside of our hands, but what we are doing, bearing in mind TfW are going to run the trains that go along there, I harass them repeatedly in terms of that.

“Interestingly, some of the data that we got when we did lets talk in the Vale, actually I was able to present that to them in terms of people’s transport choices to say, ‘can you see the difference that it would make having more transport provision in the western Vale?’

“We worked closely with them.

“The last conversation we had with the Department for Transport, who are in charge fo the railway lines, is that… they are funding the next feasibility study.”

Business case

The UK Government announced in February 2024 that it would work alongside Transport for Wales (TfW) and Vale of Glamorgan Council and part-fund the development of a business case for a new station.

Cllr Burnett said: “We haven’t heard different, so we are double checking with them.

“A small feasibility study against a massive huge project is probably towards the bottom of their priority [list].

“I haven’t heard otherwise, but we will keep pushing on that one.”

The secretary of state for transport, Louise Haigh, said after the general election that the government will bring in external expertise and “move quickly to make recommendations about current and future schemes”.

She added: “This review will support the development of our new long-term strategy for transport, developing a modern and integrated network with people at its heart, and ensuring that transport infrastructure can be delivered efficiently and on time.”

In the council’s currently adopted LDP, 220 homes were allocated for land at Higher End in St Athan and planning permission has been given for at least 133 so far.

An application for 100 homes on land at St John’s Well was approved by the council in 2015 and that site has now been completed.

The other application for eight homes was approved in 2018. Plans for 25 homes on land at Higher End were also approved more recently in May 2024.

Construction of 253 homes on land to the east of Eglwys Brewis is well underway.

The approved plans are just two homes short of the housing allocation for this site in the local deveopment plan (LDP).

Vale of Glamorgan Council also earmarked land at Church Farm for the development of 250 homes.

As part of its replacement local development plan (RLDP), the council is also looking at extending the use of this site so that it could deliver up to 500 homes.