Surprise building causing station headache

Work on a new station for Willenhall should be completed by early 2026

The construction of a new railway station is having to be revised after an "unstable" building was built close by and seemingly without planning permission, councillors have heard.

A meeting of Walsall Council was told it would cost time and money to get the offending building in Willenhall removed, so the station plans had to be adapted around it.

Victoria Kinally, from the West Midlands Rail Executive (WMRE), said: "It popped up in May this year. We came back to work after the bank holiday weekend and it had appeared next to our construction site."

Her colleague James Callingham added: "It is far from ideal to be changing this at this stage, but effectively we’ve got no choice but to keep the project moving and on schedule.”

The news was delivered to councillors during a progress update on new stations for Willenhall, Darlaston and Aldridge.

Ms Kinally said the structure in question did not appear to have planning permission or building control and had "already started to crumble".

She said the owner had recently taken part of it down and attempted to secure it.

But Mr Callingham said: “Because this building isn’t going away, quite frankly, we’re looking at doing some mitigations and adjusting the design [to the station]."

The deputy leader of the council Adrian Andrew added: "Our building control people have been down there on a number of occasions.

"We are looking at other ways of doing this but we need to act quickly so this project doesn’t go off track.”

WMRE said having to work around the surprise building was unlikely to affect the overall cost of the project, which currently stood at £85m for the stations at Willenhall and Darlaston.

It also said work on the two stations, which would link up with Wolverhampton and Walsall, was set to be completed by late 2025 or early 2026.

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, which covers councils and other public service organisations.