Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what plans the Government has to make funding available for the development of new railway stations in Wolverhampton.

We announced the £500m Restoring Your Railway Fund in January 2020 to enable opportunities to reinstate railway services and add new railway stations to the railway network. The Restoring Your Railway Programme is about connecting people and communities. The Ideas Fund is for those schemes that are in an early stage of development and need to explore the options for solving a transport problem.

An idea that can improve a service and provide a solution to a transport problem that involves levelling up the economy is exactly the kind of proposal the Ideas Fund is interested in. For proposals that have moved past the early idea stage, there is also the New Station Fund and Advanced Proposals. For information about how to apply, please refer to this website: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/re-opening-beeching-era-lines-and-stations/re-opening-beeching-era-lines-and-stations

Additionally, I am pleased to see that Phase 1 of the new Wolverhampton station has recently been completed, with a contribution of £13.5m from the Local Growth Fund to the overall Wolverhampton Interchange project, including for the tram extension to the station.