Railway communities across the West Midlands are preparing to get stuck into a range of new projects thanks to funding from West Midlands Railway (WMR).
More than a dozen schemes, which include art projects, children’s activities and help for young station adopters will receive a slice of £800,000 in funding from the operator’s ‘Your Community, Your Fund’ pool.
The funding is provided by the Department for Transport (DfT) and allocated by WMR and its sister company London Northwestern Railway to projects across the network.
Fay Easton, WMR head of stakeholder and community, said: “I am so proud of all the work that goes into our Your Community, Your Fund projects, the principles of this scheme bring intense value to communities and are of great benefit to our railways.
“It will be a pleasure to work with the project leaders and witness the progress of each project and their impact on different West Midlands areas and community groups over the coming months.”
Schemes selected for funding will benefit areas of social need and enhance the passenger experience and projects such as the refurbishment of the disused station buildings at five locations will be hugely impactful to local neighbourhoods.
The projects will be run by not-for-profit organisations and social enterprises with examples of work including station building conversions, wellbeing hubs and schemes to build confidence travelling on the railway for young people.
The ‘Your Community, Your Fund’ scheme – also known as the Customer & Communities Improvement Fund – is a plan to develop new community connections and programmes, have a positive impact at stations and contribute to the recovery of passenger numbers on the railways.
Applications for this year’s funding closed in May, with the successful projects demonstrating to DfT and independent judges their social, environmental and rail industry benefits.
Image credit: WMR
