There was cause for triple celebrations at Alsager Station yesterday morning (Tuesday, 18th May).

The station celebrated becoming dementia friendly with the help of Alsager Partnership, the return of East Midlands Railway (EMR) services and the Friends of Alsager Station received their Cheshire Best Kept Station Award 2020.

East Midlands Railway completed a project which helps people living with dementia to navigate around Alsager Station more easily.

In completing the work, EMR collaborated with the Alsager Partnership, Alzheimer's Society, North Staffordshire Community Rail Partnership and Alsager Town Council.

The organisations have worked together to develop new signage which follows best practice when trying to direct people living with dementia around busy environments.

To help these passengers the signage includes easily recognisable symbols, clear colour contrasts and are not surrounded by other distracting information.

Alsager is already recognised as a Dementia Friendly Community and each year it works towards retaining the status by making improvements – this year it chose to focus on the railway station.

East Midlands Railway (EMR) decided to suspend almost all its services for passengers at Alsager from 7th September.

Alsager Town Councillors felt that East Midlands Railway had taken the decision to "save time" by missing out Alsager on their routes.

However, East Midlands Railway hit back and claimed that it was not about "saving time", but it was rather about protecting performance which had been "historically poor" on this line.

Residents, councillors and community groups lobbied East Midlands Trains urging them to reverse their decision to remove hourly trains stopping at Alsager from Monday to Saturday.

All the hard work campaigning paid off after the train operator announced the return of hourly services to and from Alsager, which was reintroduced on Sunday (16th May) in an "improved" timetable.

Alsager Station was awarded with a working to become dementia friendly status at the virtual Cheshire Best Kept Station Awards 2020 in November.

The project, which forms part of helping Alsager become a dementia friendly destination, included improved station signage, a dementia friendly awareness training session for station adopters and other community members.

A dementia friendly walking route from the station to the town centre will feature in the 'Rails to Trails' collection of short walks from stations on the line produced by North Staffordshire Community Rail Partnership.

The winners were announced by Cheshire Best Kept Stations' chairman, Mark Barker, through a YouTube ceremony.