Cullompton and Wellington Stations

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential merits of reopening Cullompton and Wellington railway stations.

It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Butler. The Minister may have heard some of these arguments before, but there have been developments in recent months that he should hear before any decisions are made in relation to Cullompton and Wellington stations.

The south-west has suffered from chronic under-investment in transport infrastructure—a legacy of the Beeching cuts in the 1960s, when communities were cut off as many stations across the country, including Cullompton and Wellington, lost their rail services. The campaign to bring back those stations commenced almost as soon as they were lost. In 1996, Devon county council commissioned a preliminary design for a new station at Cullompton, and by 2013 the metro board had been established, bringing together MPs, local councils, the rail industry and enterprise partnerships.

Since then the metro board has met more than 30 times, co-chaired in recent months by my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington (Gideon Amos) and me. The studies have culminated in the submission of a final business case to the Department for Transport in May 2024. Later that summer, my colleague and I received letters from the Chancellor pulling the plug on Restoring Your Railway funding. That was a gut punch for communities across the country with less well-established programmes, but I am pleased to say that Restoring Your Railway had already done a lot of the hard work relating to Cullompton and Wellington stations.

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

Somerton and Langport is the largest area without a station between London and Penzance; it represents a 28-mile gap between Taunton and Castle Cary. I have worked hard with constituents in the area, who indeed put together a robust business plan and applied for the Restoring Your Railway fund, only to find that all their work had been turned down, scuppering their plans to build a station in the area. Does my hon. Friend agree that that decision denies my constituents the economic and social opportunities that the connectivity of a station would provide, which would enable them to bring business and new homes into the area?

[Richard Foord]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning economic and social opportunities. I too have been contacted by constituents about how they think a station in their town would provide those. Neil Perry, a resident of Cullompton who commutes daily to Exeter for his job as a teacher, told me that he spends nearly 10 full days each year stuck in Cullompton traffic—time lost to him simply because there is no local rail option. He leaves the house at 7.30 am to beat the worst of the congestion, and must leave work at 2.30 pm to avoid a 25-minute journey turning into an hour-long ordeal. The train from Tiverton Parkway to Exeter takes just 11 minutes, and we could see a journey of a similar time from Cullompton. Neil estimates he would save over £2,000 a year in parking, fuel, and car maintenance and points out that Cullompton would become an up-and-coming and much more prosperous town, which would help to drive growth.

This Labour Government are very keen on economic growth, particularly the role that development and housing infrastructure plays in it. They have set an ambitious target to build 1.5 million homes by 2029, and its success hinges on delivering the necessary infrastructure to support those homes. I hear time and again from the people I represent in Devon that they do not want to, and cannot, see the homes built in advance of infrastructure that just does not arrive.

Nowhere is that more evident that in the Culm Garden Village project. Located just east of junction 28 of the M5, the proposed development would bring over 5,000 new homes to Cullompton. Without a railway station, those new residents would be reliant on the motorway. That motorway is already under severe pressure; junction 28 sees queues on to the inside lane, making it already a very unsafe motorway approach road to use. Residents welcomed the recent news of funding for the Cullompton town centre relief road. It is a step forward but, on its own, that relief road will not be enough. We have already seen the consequences of building homes without the right infrastructure: gridlocked roads, overstretched public services and growing frustration among residents. We cannot see that mistake made again in Cullompton.

Another of the people I represent from Cullompton, Tim Pethick, has worked in mental health services at Torbay hospital for 20 years. He was recently diagnosed as unfit to drive due to epilepsy, and now faces a 34-mile journey to work using public transport. Cullompton has no direct rail link. He has looked into using a bus pass, but that is not possible because bus passes cannot be used before 9.30 in the morning and the bus journey takes more than two hours. Here is somebody who has worked solidly for the NHS for the last couple of decades and whose career might be over if he cannot get good public access through the train. Those are just two examples, but my concern is that they are just two of many people who feel isolated and forced out of the workforce because of the lack of rail infrastructure in Cullompton.

Thinking more broadly, the south-west as a whole is a region where social mobility is a challenge. The South-West Social Mobility Commission’s 2024 report confirms that our region is one of the worst performing in England for disadvantaged young people. By age 19, 34% of disadvantaged young people in our region have achieved a level 3 qualification, compared with 42% nationally. We can see that the south-west has quite a high proportion of disadvantaged students, but a low proportion of disadvantaged students who progress to higher education. The University of Exeter commissioned a 2019 report called “Social Mobility in the South West”, which revealed that only 17% of disadvantaged pupils in the region went on to university—the lowest rate among all regions in England.

A major contributor to that poor performance is transport infrastructure. Young people in rural towns and villages—places such as Cullompton and Wellington—often struggle to access college, sixth form and any sort of further or higher education. For young people without access to a car, getting to college or university is not just difficult; it is impossible.

The reopening of Cullompton station would be transformative, as would the reopening of Wellington station in Somerset. It would open up opportunities to get to Exeter college, the University of Exeter and FE establishments further afield, and would be fantastic for generating new apprenticeship opportunities. As the Labour Government have said, if we want to get Britain working, apprenticeships will be an aspect to that.

Just two weeks ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton and Wellington and I met the Rail Minister, Lord Hendy, and 30 local residents who had travelled to London to lobby him. Together, we made the case directly that reopening the railway stations would not just be a transport upgrade; it would be life-changing for our communities.

A single journey by rail produces up to 75% fewer carbon emissions per passenger than the same journey by car. We know that transportation as a whole accounts for 27% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, so the railway stations would support and bolster the Labour Government’s climate change mitigation aims. The reopening of Wellington and Cullompton stations is not just some idea that will benefit a few people in the south-west of England; it is very much thought through, supported on a cross-party basis, economically sound and environmentally responsible, and it could be socially transformative.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Butler. I am grateful both to my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord), for securing this debate, and to the Minister; I really must be more punctual in asking a Minister’s permission to speak in future, and I am very grateful for his permission to take part in this debate.

A couple of weeks ago, a delegation of 30 to 40 local residents travelled the three or four hours from Somerset and Devon to Parliament to present a couple of letters to the Rail Minister, Lord Hendy, in Westminster Hall, one from Wellington town council and one signed by MPs throughout the Cardiff-Bristol-Exeter corridor. It is important to remember that the station’s reopening project, which combines two reopenings in one, will benefit the whole region, and my hon. Friend and I place on record our gratitude to the hon. Members for Exeter (Steve Race), for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) and for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge), who have all signed the letter with us and are fully supportive of the project.

For example, the project will enable thousands of young people who have no access to public transport, in west Somerset and elsewhere, to travel to colleges in Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter. It will also enable thousands of customers to reach businesses.

[Sarah Dyke]

I intervene because Jonathan, a constituent from Somerton, hoped that his son would attend Richard Huish sixth form in Taunton, in my hon. Friend’s constituency. However, the nearest train station is 12 miles away, and there are unreliable bus services right across Glastonbury and Somerton, so it proved impossible for Jonathan’s son to attend the sixth form of his choosing. Does my hon. Friend agree that the lack of rail connectivity creates barriers to education?

[Gideon Amos]

My hon. Friend highlights a practical example of how so many young people in Somerset, a place where sixth form colleges are literally few and far between, have difficulty accessing education because of the lack of public transport. This station project would enable thousands of people to reach Exeter college and the excellent Richard Huish college in my constituency, which is well known to be one of the best in the country.

As I was saying, the station’s reopening will allow young people to reach jobs along the Bristol, Exeter and Cardiff corridor and customers to reach businesses. It is no wonder that a key strength of the case for the project is its benefit-cost ratio of 3.67. For the cost of around £42 million, £180 million of economic growth would go into the region, which I know the Government would want to see. Frankly, there is no other rail project in the south-west that is ready to go and could be built and completed in the next two years, as the project is so far advanced. In fact, had it not been for the review in July last year, the spades would be in the ground and the platforms under construction, because the contract was about to be let and the detailed design was almost finished.

Our letter makes other equally telling points about the benefits of this station. Wellington is a growing town, which has had around 2,000 new homes in the last few years and has a projected 41% increase in housing numbers. That will mean about 6,000 more residents, and without the railway station, that is unlikely to be possible.

Finally, we asked the Department for Transport to tell us what the recent benefit-cost ratios were—the figure for our project is 3.67. The answer we received was that the Department does not routinely share or publish benefit-cost ratios. We were asking not for routine publication, but specifically for the benefit-cost ratio information. I hope that the Minister will look at releasing that information.