Let them borrow: Ken skates around roads funding gap

Welsh councils will be able to access up to £120m to repair local roads over the next two years, under a borrowing initiative set out in the Welsh Government’s final budget for 2025-26.

Officials said the plan will provide an extra £10m of revenue funding to local councils to enable them to unlock an additional £120m of capital funding and accelerate the process of fixing local roads and pavements.

The Welsh Government said the scheme will be designed in close partnership with the Welsh Local Government Association (WLGA) and will be open for applications by the end of this financial year.

Cabinet Secretary for Transport and North Wales, Ken Skates (pictured)  said: ‘Connecting our communities by fixing our roads is a key priority for us and we will continue to do all that we can to improve the future resilience of roads across Wales.’

WLGA leader and transport spokesperson Cllr Andrew Morgan OBE said: ‘I have been working closely with the Welsh Government on this initiative over recent months and I am really pleased to see it come to fruition.

‘A previous initiative between 2012 and 2014 was highly successful and showed what can be achieved by councils when the right level of funding is available.

‘This funding will enable significant improvements to roads, pavements and bridges across Wales.’

The Welsh Local Government Settlement in December included provisional local transport grants to councils totalling £103m next year, compared to £102.9m this year – a real-terms cut.

Last month Mr Skates announced what was claimed to be a funding boost of £25m for Wales’ trunk road network in the next financial year, although a Welsh Government spokesperson subsequently confirmed that the total expected spend will be ‘more than £37m’, which compares to an annual average spend of just over £20m in the previous four years.