Progress to open a new station at Haxby will be boosted if the council spends £250K on buying a strategic plot of land.
That’s the message from a new report updating City of York Council on the ambition to create a new station for the town.
Councillors will be ask to approve the land purchase “help reduce the risks to the delivery of the project and put the strongest possible case forward to the government to secure greater funding for a new railway station”.
A City of York Council spokesperson said: “The purchasing of this land will help reduce one of the biggest risks with major projects. Problems with land acquisition can prevent delivery or cause significant delays.
“The land proposed to be purchased has the potential to help to deliver a station in Haxby either as the station location or for other strategic uses.”
They are not revealing where the land is until a deal is completed due to commercial confidentiality.
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Councillors will decide whether to go ahead and buy the land at a meeting of the executive next Thursday (30 September).
In November 2020, the government announced that £400k had been made available to fund further development work.
Since then, with Network Rail, the council has been working on a strategic and business case to help unlock the additional funding that will be necessary to deliver the railway station, with the hope that a new station could be built in 2024.