New section of £16.7m cycle path to open before Easter

Richard Youle, local democracy reporter

A new section of cycle path in the Towy Valley is expected to open before Easter, with the route expected to be finally completed before the end of the year.

The 13-mile Towy Valley path will eventually link Abergwili, on the outskirts of Carmarthen, and Ffairfach, just south of Llandeilo.

The council-led project has £16.7m of UK Government funding and required some compulsory purchases of land, which culminated in a public inquiry.

Speaking last year, cabinet member for transport, waste and infrastructure services Cllr Edward Thomas said the UK Government had granted the council an extension, meaning it would need to spend the £16.7m by the end of March 2025 rather than the end of March 2024.

“This is an important project, and we are confident in its delivery and our ability to complete the work required to access the funding awarded to us within the specific deadline,” said Cllr Thomas at the time.

Slippage

A report before cabinet this week said progress was good but “slippage” due to bad weather, ecology work, land access issues and delays to pre-cast elements of the shared-use path meant the project would be delivered in 2025-26.

Speaking at a meeting on March 31, cabinet member for resources Alun Lenny acknowledged these factors but said the scheme was progressing well.

The council had control of all the required land, he said, and all the packages of work to complete the path had been awarded.

Asked by the Local Democracy Reporting Service if the council had a more precise estimate of when the path would be completed, a spokesman said winter 2025.

He also said the western section between Abergwili and Nantgaredig was due to open before the coming Easter holidays.

The council, which has allocated £1.8m of its own money to the project, commissioned engineers in 2013 to identify options for a shared-use path between Carmarthen and Ffairfach.

Levelling Up fund

A couple of short sections were completed in 2018 and 2019 but a lack of money held the scheme up until Westminster’s Levelling Up Fund award of £16.7m in 2021. The grant has now been extended by a further year to March 2026.

The path is expected to boost visitor numbers, provide links to key employment and health sites, and potentially generate some £4.4m per year for the local economy.

If a Llandeilo bypass proposed by the Welsh Government gets built, cyclists and walkers would be able to get from Ffairfach to Llandeilo on a path beside the new road.

The cabinet report, meanwhile, set out other movements in the council’s capital spending programme.

The authority had been expecting to spend £257.8m on a range of new projects including housing and school schemes in 2024-25, but the updated forecast is £186.9m based on data from the end of December. This fall is due to delays and less income and grant funding than anticipated.

A sizeable chunk of the £186m expenditure in 2024-25 is £48m on the Pentre Awel health, medical research and leisure development at Delta Lakes, Llanelli.

The first of four planned zones of Pentre Awel, featuring a new leisure centre, is due to open by the summer. And £17m has gone on a project to convert the former Debenhams store in Carmarthen into a leisure, healthcare and customer service hub.

Planned spending which won’t take place or is being curtailed in 2024-25 includes some school projects, a scheme at Jackson’s Lane in Carmarthen, and work at an eroded section of the Millenum Coastal Path at Morfa Bacas, Bynea.