Welsh county to spend over £40 million on infrastructure next year

Anthony Lewis, Local democracy reporter

Highways, street lighting, transport schemes, coal tips and flood risk management will see almost £42m spent on them in Rhondda Cynon Taf (RCT) next year.

As part of the proposed supplementary highways and transportation capital programme for 2026/2027, a cabinet report says that £41.95m is included for various infrastructure projects in the county borough.

The spend includes £6.63m for highway improvements which will see £5.86m go towards carriageways, £565,000 towards footways and £200,000 towards unadopted roads.

The £260,000 allocated for street lighting will be split with £100,000 going towards traffic signals and £160,000 towards street lighting.

There will be £12.22m going towards highways structures in 2026/2027 which includes £8.03m slippage from 2025/2026.

Some of the schemes include the Brook Street footbridge in Ystrad, the Afon Cynon Bridge between Cwmbach and the Asda Roundabout in Aberdare, retaining walls repair or replacements, confined space culvert repairs, rock netting on the Rhigos mountain road, the A4059 Commercial St footbridge and the feeder pipe footbridge.

A budget of £420,000 is being allocated to parks structures including £170,000 of previously identified slippage from 2025/26 and this will go towards replacing two footbridges which are currently closed due to their condition.

In terms of tip safety, in January 2026, the Welsh Government announced that the council has been successful in gaining capital funding totaling £12.89m for the 2026-27 financial year.

It will continue to target significant essential capital maintenance on former colliery spoil tips, mostly concentrating on water management with significant investment in Abergorki Inlet and tips in Treorchy in 2026/27, the report says.

Other schemes underway include Tylorstown (Llanwonno) and Graig Ddu Dinas.

For traffic management, there is £240,000 allocated with core capital funding of £140,000, plus an additional £100,000 of investment funding.

The council’s capital allocation will enable the implementation of small scale schemes and provide safety aids such as warning signs, the introduction of traffic orders and the provision of residents parking.

There is £7.39m allocated for transportation infrastructure including £4.5m for the Llanharan Sustainable Transport Corridor, £603,000 for the Cynon Gateway link road, £600,000 towards the dualling of the A4119 (for peripheral works and ongoing consideration of CPO and other longer term project costs), £384,000 for the Gelli/Treorchy link road £500,000 for the park and ride programme, £550,000 for the Making Better Use programme and miscellaneous improvements and £255,000 for scheme development.

And there’s £1.89m allocated to flood risk management of which £1.51m is council funding and £374,000 is secured grant.

The report says that should all grant bids be successful then funding for 2026/27 may increase to £5.63m.