Work to relocate Waterbeach railway station held up

Planners hope the relocated station will make it easier for residents to use the train

Work to relocate a station has been delayed, but those behind the project say they hope it will still be completed by next year.

Network Rail wants to carry out additional survey work that will slightly delay the completion of the Waterbeach Station move.

Moving the station is a key part of the Cambridgeshire town's development.

Officials say the existing station will not close until the new one is fully open.

Building a new railway station was a condition of South Cambridgeshire District Council's decision to approve plans to build 4,500 homes as part of the Waterbeach New Town.

But there is not enough room in the timetable for trains to call at two stations so the decision was taken to move the existing one a mile-and-a-half (2.4km) up the line to where the new development is being built.

The new station will be close to the new housing development

The £37m project is being overseen and funded by Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) which agreed to take it on in order to "unlock" the new housing after the developer had difficulty raising enough money.

At a meeting of the GCP executive board this week, councillors were warned that the preliminary work was taking longer than planned, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Peter Blake, transport director at the GCP, said: "We had hoped that we were going to complete the full business case by the end of the financial year.

"Actually, Network Rail and the rail industry want a little bit more survey work and preliminary design work undertaken."

He said their final reports would not be available until the autumn, meaning that work to build the new station would start late.

The relocated station will have platforms long enough for at least eight carriage trains, with the potential for expansion to accommodate 12 carriages in the future.

Planners hope that a modern and larger station will encourage many of Waterbeach's new residents to use the train rather than the car for their journeys.