CAMPAIGNERS have urged the Welsh Government to speed up plans for a new railway station in southern Monmouthshire that would connect villages to the South Wales Main Line.

Plans for a new "walkway" station - as opposed to the car-orientated parkways in places like Bristol - have been promoted by villagers in Magor and Undy for nearly a decade but there is still no sign of the proposals being realised, despite the support of local politicians.

The campaigners, under the name of the Magor Action Group On Rail (MAGOR), say their plans to reopen the old Magor station fit in well with the Welsh Government's recent focus on prioritising public transport projects over roads.

A Welsh Government deputy minister said rail improvements were "key to the delivery of our improving public transport agenda" but admitted projects were dependent on UK Government funding.

A new Magor station was endorsed by the South East Wales Transport Commission, headed by Lord Terry Burns and set up by Mark Drakeford in 2019 to find alternatives to an M4 relief road. The Welsh Government subsequently backed the commission's recommendations.

But MAGOR campaigners, in a petition to the Senedd, called on ministers to "expedite" the reopening of the station "as a 'quick win' in the delivery of the Lord Burns report".

They called the project "a technically simple and cost-effective element of the [Burns] plan" which "is needed now, with the population of Magor with Undy rapidly expanding and shortly becoming a town".

Deputy climate change minister Lee Waters told the Senedd committee the campaigners' work "is well known to Welsh Government and actions are in hand to progress development of proposals for a station at Magor".

He said a Welsh Government team had been "established to progress the [Burns commission's] recommendations at pace" and had "secured financing from UK Government to carry out feasibility studies for the capacity improvements of the South Wales Main Line".

"I see rail improvements as key to the delivery of our improving public transport agenda," Mr Waters added. "However, as you know, most of our rail infrastructure and the funding for it is non-devolved and the sole responsibility of the UK Government."

Committee member Joel James said he "sensed there is concern at the delay" to the reopening of Magor station, and asked for a "specific timescale" for the project.

He also urged the committee to contact rail firms like Transport for Wales and First Great Western "just to see how ready they are to go" at new proposed stations like Magor.