Council told £32m spent on halted Wixams station will not be repaid

Bedford Borough Council has been told it will not recover more than £32m already spent on plans and construction work for a new railway station, after the project was paused and reconfigured.

Councillors were informed that the authority will not be reimbursed for an estimated £32.1m incurred while preparing for and beginning work on a two-platform station at Wixams. Construction was halted after plans changed to accommodate a larger, four-platform station to serve the proposed Universal theme park.

Following the change in scope, the council ended its contract with Network Rail. Responsibility for restarting the scheme has since been handed back to Network Rail by the Department for Transport, which has instructed the government agency to take the project forward under the revised plans.

Jo Branson-Budd, the council’s head of capital projects, told committee members that the Department for Transport would not repay the money already committed to the original scheme. Branson-Budd said that money already spent on the project would not be reimbursed by the DfT.

The council had previously set aside £62.6m for the initial two-platform station design, but the revised four-platform station is expected to require significantly greater investment.

Branson-Budd said the £32.1m figure represented the forecast cost to the council from 2018 onwards, adding that the final total would not be confirmed for up to a year.

Image: Bedford Borough Council