A brand-new £22m railway station in South Gloucestershire is set to slash the time it takes to get to the county's capital by 50 per cent.

As a new stop on the Bristol-Gloucester line, the 22-minute journey time represents a huge incentive for work and leisure journeys in the county. Timetabling provision is for half hourly trains.

Planners are due on Thursday to green-light the long-awaited station, the original stop, just a few yards north of the new site, having fallen victim to Richard Beeching's notorious cuts in 1965.

Final construction comes at the end of a lengthy consultation process: in February 2019, the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) announced a £500,000 feasibility study into plans for two new bypasses and work to see whether Charfield was viable; that June, £0.9m a further was spent on a full business case. 

A January 2020 version of the Joint Local Transport Plan 4, led by WECA, then proposed to deliver the facility by 2023-2024, with a key aim to "support housing growth". Charfield, close to Junction 14 of the M5, has seen two recent substantial housing developments with further development in the pipeline.

A recent public consultation suggests that late 2024 is the likely opening date, with a final cost of £22.4m for the project. But it's not just a housing boon: local industry, including FTSE 250 company Renishaw PLC, which has a plant in Charfield and its HQ half a mile away near Wotton-under-Edge.

South Gloucestershire Council said of the move: "[It] will support sustainable travel to and from the village and surrounding area. The station will also improve access to jobs, education and a wider variety of services and facilities and help mitigate some of the impacts of recent development in the area."