Friends of Radstock Railway Land has been successful in its bold bid for a £10,000 award from the Lush Charity Pot to get its Green Rail Radstock project off the ground.
The money will be spent on rail-not-road campaigning, project promotion, site preparation and professional reports, including a planning report and a road report.
The group have been raising their own funds to pay for an alternative planning application to the one already submitted to B&NES by NRR and Linden Homes and hope to be ready soon to put it in, but are in a race against time.
The Friends of Radstock Railway Land only recently announced their intention as they have been examining all the issues involved thoroughly to ensure that the plan is sound and that it will work. They say that planning permission would help them to get match funding from businesses and organisations, so that, ultimately, Lottery Funding could be accessed to make the Green Rail Radstock project a reality and open up the possibility of rail – either heritage rail, passenger rail, or both.
The group's alternate plan would mean very little, if any, housing on the site, which would be used as a managed nature reserve with heritage restoration and community facilities, such as a play and picnic area. It would be carried out in stages by volunteers and could take seven years to complete.