The timeframe for completing Okehampton’s second railway station is tight but is still on course to open in February 2026, writes Alison Stephenson.

The track design has been completed, and the 200-space car park design and ‘active travel’ elements are now commencing for Okehampton Interchange station, which has secured £13.5 million of ‘levelling up’ funding from the Government.

Vegetation will start to be cleared on site as soon as Natural England has approved a licence that shows the impact of the development on dormice has been considered.

Work on the station has already cost nearly half a million pounds, and a further £5 million is being spent in the current financial year. The remaining £9.5 million will be used in the following 12 months, according to a report for West Devon Borough Council’s hub committee.

The station is expected to be “substantially completed” by November 2025.

The total budget for the project is nearly £15 million with Devon Council Council paying £1.3 million, West Devon £120,000, £50,000 from the Bus Service Improvement Plan and £25,000 from Network Rail.

The borough council is responsible for delivering the station, the single biggest piece of public transport investment in the area for a generation.

It will be built in the Stockley Hamlet area of Okehampton, off Exeter Road and near the A30 junction on the eastern fringes of the town. As such it is expected to reduce traffic in the town centre and relieve pressure on the existing station car park.

Passenger services from Okehampton to Exeter were reinstated in November 2021 and the Dartmoor Line, as it is known, has exceeded expectations, with more than half a million journeys taken in its first two years.

The second station was renamed from Okehampton Parkway to Okehampton Interchange to reflect links that will be created with buses, walking and cycling routes. It is intended to open up rail access to wider areas of West Devon, Dartmoor and North Cornwall and support housing growth.

The station will consist of a single platform with a footbridge landing in the proposed car park. There will be cycle parking and EV charging points and new cycle routes into town. Bus service timetables will change to link with train times.

WDBC’s director of place and enterprise Chris Brook told the committee: “The programme is tight, but it is a risk that is being managed. It would be foolish to say there are no time pressures, but there is not a critical problem.”

Mr Brook said government money would be spent first as there are time constraints on that even though the Government had delayed the project by 18 months.

He added that there was less pressure to spend the local government funding as fast.

The station, which is being designed and built by a company called Octavius, will be operated by GWR, which will only install lavatories if the station is manned, councillors were told.

A number of public meetings have been held in Okehampton and will continue until the project is completed.