Derby railway station improvement project starts

The city council said the new station had been designed with people, rather than cars, in mind

A £2.2m project to modernise the entrance to Derby's railway station has started.

The main area will be pedestrianised and there will also be a new bus interchange, a shelter for almost 150 bikes and covered taxi rank queuing.

A £400,000 cost increase and 15-month delay on the original plans was defended by the city council, who said the design work had been complex.

The work is due to be finished by the end of November.

Derby City Council's Director of Planning, Christine Durrant, said the overspend was not due to a lack of planning.

"It's just that when you start to develop a scheme you start off with a concept, you move to preliminary design and then as you get through to the detailed design, that's when the real operational details come to the fore.

"So really we have done the best that we can, it's just that these things do take time, it's a very complicated space and it is just not that easy."

She added that the work would be scaled back during the Olympics to minimise disruption to those travelling to the games.