THE delivery of Somerset’s newest railway station could be dramatically sped up following a deal involving septic tanks.

Somerset Council has been working with the Department for Transport (DfT) and Network Rail to restore rail services to Wellington, which lost its previous railway station in 1964 under the notorious Beeching cuts.

Following the cancellation of the High Speed 2 rail link between Birmingham and Manchester in October 2023, the government announced a new station off Nynehead Road would be “funded to delivery” (pending the approval of the final business case).

Efforts to bring forward the access to the new station, as part of a wider housing development near the town’s Lidl supermarket, have been stymied by the ongoing phosphates crisis, which is holding up thousands of new homes across Somerset.

But the station may have just moved one step closer following an agreement between the council and WCI surrounding the replacement of septic tanks across the county, reducing the risk of phosphate pollution and allowing new homes to go ahead.

The access road to the new station will be delivered as part of a new housing development of up to 220 homes, with the existing access route from Nynehead Road being extended up to the railway line and a new car park put in place.

The council’s planning and transport policy sub-committee voted in late-January to provisionally spend £4.5m of funding from other local housing developments (collected under the community infrastructure levy, or CIL) to deliver the new road in advance if the delivery of the new homes was delayed.

In late-March the council signed an agreement with WCI, a civil engineering firm based in Wiveliscombe, to create a new phosphate credits scheme, allowing developers to unlock new homes by offsetting their impact elsewhere in the Somerset Levels and Moors catchment area.

The agreement allows WCI to replace septic tanks – a key source of river pollution – with more efficient package treatment plants, at no cost to the home-owner.

Where other phosphate mitigation schemes rely on the removal of vast areas of productive agricultural land for conversion to wetlands and woodlands, WCI’s scheme deals with the problem of pollution from human occupation at the source, allowing specific settlements to be targeted as needed.

This strategy was first proposed by WCI director Brad Taylor in 2021 as a means of mitigating phosphates from the ongoing regeneration of the Firepool site in Taunton town centre.

He said: “We are thrilled to have agreement from Somerset Council on what is truly a ‘win-win’ opportunity for all parties.

“Our scheme removes a huge administrative burden from the council while providing developers of all sizes with a low cost, simple way of gain planning approval for much needed housing.

“At the same time, we’re helping cash-strapped households improve their drainage and do their bit for the environment.

“This scheme has been years in the making and we’re immensely proud of the impact it will have.

“With hundreds of customers already signed up to the scheme, our engineers can finally get to work delivering septic tank replacements to the same high standards that we’ve delivered for more than 40 years.”

Chris Winter, founder of Cherwyn Developments, said that this decision would enable the new homes around the Wellington station site to be delivered much more rapidly than had previously been anticipated.

He said: “Our Longforth development will provide up to 200 new houses and the critical spine road for the long-awaited railway station in Wellington, but in part has been held up by the lack of viable phosphate mitigation schemes.

“WCI’s phosphate credits provide the solution to enable the planning application to be determined.

“They are the most cost-effective on the market, allow for immediate determination of the planning application without a dependency on the council’s overwhelmed planning and legal teams, and are not restricted to minor developments.”

Somerset Council has confirmed that this mitigation will be carried out independently of the six phosphate solutions which are being trialled and implemented using £9.6m of central government funding, which was awarded just before Christmas 2023.

Officers declined to speculate how many new homes would be unlocked through WCI’s work, but confirmed a decision on the Wellington station development was expected to be taken later in the spring, allowing construction to begin before the year is over.

A spokesman said: “We anticipate this application coming before our planning committee west on May 1, subject to outstanding issues being resolved.”