A NEW community group has vowed to clean up Solihull station.
The Friends of Solihull Station, set up last September, will be working alongside Chiltern Railways, Network Rail and Solihull Council in a bid to improve the station and surrounding areas.
Top of its agenda is to clear the disused platform and fill it with plants and artwork for passengers to enjoy as well as picking up litter around the station on the approach into the town centre.
The team of ten came together after the Council distributed leaflets seeing if Silhillians were interested in forming a Friends Group for the station.
The group is hoping to clear the disused platform, which is currently very overgrown, and put some plants and artwork in to make it more attractive to passengers.
Chairman Ian Henson said the group was hoping to finalise the details at a meeting held last night (Wednesday) and they will hope to be able to begin to pitch to organisations for community funding.
He added: “So far we have had to do quite a lot of behind the scenes bits like setting up a bank account and doing research into what projects we would like to do and how we can do it.
“We have been doing some front of house projects including picking up litter on the approaches to the town centre.
“This started almost straight away in conjunction with the Council.
“The station is used by 1.5 million people each year and some are dropping sandwich wrappers, coffee cups and the like as they make their way to and from the station so we wanted to improve that aspect of station life.”
In a bid to boost the profile of the group a competition has been launched across borough schools and colleges for young people aged 19 years of age or under to design a Friends of Solihull Station Logo.
Anyone interested in joining the group should contact Sarah Jones at Solihull Council on [email protected]
