THE campaign for a new railway station at Magor with Undy has received a £110,000 boost after the Welsh Government awarded it funding for a feasibility study.

The push for the return of railway travel in the area was started by the Magor Action Group on Rail (MAGOR) in 2012 and has made significant strides in the last five years, including partnering with Monmouthshire County Council (MCC).

Once the study is completed it will mark the end of the third stage of the eight-stage Governance for Railway Investment Projects (GRIP) process and could provide the foundation for millions of pounds worth of funding.

Paul Turner, MAGOR committee member, said this milestone had been a long time coming.

“We have been campaigning for five years now, we started feasibility work in 2015 and we completed the first two stages of GRIP process.

“We started GRIP three towards the end of last year, which includes some very technical studies, and the company doing work for us and MCC broke it into three sub-stages to make a start. The first substage was very promising but up until April we didn’t have funding for the whole of stage three.

“This funding will come as a huge help to a project which at one stage had tried crowd funding some of the money.

“We are delighted that we now have the funding to complete the third part of the process. It will then say whether or not it is feasible, how feasible it is and then if it is a good business case. It is another big step down the road.”

In April this year the Welsh Government announced 12 new railway station sites which were being prioritised, but Magor was not listed.

However, the group’s concern about the snub was lifted when Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport Ken Skates visited in May and provided reassurance.

Mr Turner said: “He came out within a matter of days and said those other options were in a different state of play.

“He said how much do you need? We said about £80,000 and he said is that all? Then five or six weeks ago, MCC had an invitation to apply for funding.”

The group is hoping that the feasibility study and stage three of the GRIP process will be finished by April next year which will allow them to apply for even more funding.

“It puts us in a much better position to apply for the UK new station fund. We applied for £7 million last year and failed but the Department of Transport invited us to talk to them. They were very encouraging and said we should apply once we had completed stage three. So hopefully we can get a good feasibility study and we can progress.”

This support from the Welsh Government comes after the project has received an extensive amount of support from a range of groups.

Mr Turner said: “We have spoken to all of the franchises applying for the Wales and Border and METRO franchise and they have all been quite impressed, Abellio were particularly interested.

“We have had huge community support and great cross-party support from Mark Reckless AM, John Griffiths AM, David Rowlands AM and Jessica Morden MP.”