Acocks Green’s Railway Station will be getting a £1m investment, as part of the extra capital spending announced in the autumn statement last week. The money will provide two passenger lifts, new stairs and an expanded footbridge, finally making the Station fully accessible to the disabled and those with pushchairs.

This scheme is something that I, Councillor Iain Bowen and John Hemming MP have long campaigned for, and I’m delighted that the money has now been found by the Government. It means that the peculiar absurdity of the Station car park having a nice row of disabled parking bays next to a long flight of steps to the Station, which is impossible for many disabled people to climb, can finally be put to bed. We don’t yet have a precise timing for the implimentation of the scheme, but we have been told that it will be completed by 2014.