That £1,500,000 from the Council’s Local Integrated Transport Capital budget along with £3 to 4 million from the Town Deal Funding bid be allocated to the Edginswell Station Project, for match funding of any successful bid to the DfT’s New Stations Funding.

Edginswell Station has been a strategic ambition of Torbay Council for many years, appearing in the Local Plan in 1995 and all Transport and Spatial Planning documents since.

In addition to the previously strong strategic case, the declaration of a Climate Emergency and announcement of growth/re-build of Torbay Hospital will be key additional factors.  In particular the hospital as it is one of a select few nationally and this has potential to set the Edginswell project ahead of other schemes.

An alternative option would be to include match funding from another source, such as borrowing or not submit a bid for DfT New Stations Funding, however this would result in a key strategic area lacking access to the rail network.

Background paper: Edginswell Station Fundng (attached).

This decision will be implemented immediately.

In January 2020 Government announced that a new round of New Stations Funding (3) would be opened, with details following in an announcement by the DfT on 28 February 2020 that £20m would be available for scheme proposals to be submitted by 5 June 2020.

In 2016 a bid was made to the Department for Transport (DfT) and Network Rail for New Stations Funding (2).  That bid was for £7.739m with match funding of £4m from the LEP and £1.2m from a combination of existing spending, the Local Transport Plan allocation and Section 106.

In 2017 the Council received notification that the funding bid had been unsuccessful.  Costs were quoted as the main reason with further feedback confirming that the key risks were the concerns as they needed more comfort that the costs associated with those risks would not increase substantially as the project moved forward – the overall costs themselves of the project were not so concerning.

The scheme in general received very positive feedback from the panel.  They agreed that the strategic case was strong and that the economic benefits were clear.  The links to supporting health facilities and the local housing and jobs growth in the area were also recognised.

In October 2017 it was agreed by Council that no further Council funding be committed to the scheme and that this should be reflected on the Capital Plan but that any further work on the business case shall only be supported by external funding instead.  Therefore the project remains on the capital plan.  It was necessary for the LEP to reallocate the £4m of funding initially set aside for Edginswell as it had become apparent that the scheme would not be delivered within their required timescales.  This leaves the Council with only its own budgets and Section 106.

There has been no substantial change in the strong strategic case for the scheme.  However, critically two of the three key risks that caused most concern in the last submission have been resolved.  The remaining risk of the three is with track alignment to tie into a platform edge.  This is considered to be appropriately covered by the risk allowances as is not uncommon for a station proposal.

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