ATTEMPTS to regenerate Blaenau Gwent must look beyond Ebbw Vale and focus on other towns, councillors have said.

Ebbw Vale’s former steelworks site has received almost £140million in funding, it was said during a meeting of the authority’s environment, regeneration and economic development scrutiny committee.

The committee was discussing the Welsh Government’s Targeted Regeneration Investment (TRI) Programme, which would see Blaenau Gwent receive a share of £44million earmarked for south-east Wales from a national regeneration budget of up to £100million.

Aiming to run alongside economic projects such as the Valleys Task Force, it would see Ebbw Vale developed as the strategic hub of the regeneration, with the Ebbw Fawr and Ebbw Fach valleys re-developed in a phased approach, operating as ‘spokes’ to the hub.

But Cllr Hedley McCarthy said that after spending £137million on the steelworks site, the new scheme should look outside Ebbw Vale and at projects that are ready to go.

“It’s got to be developed for the view of the borough,” said the Labour member for Llanhilleth.

“I obviously welcome the Ebbw Fach part.

“We’d have made a damn sight more progress if there had been the projects that we’d presumably got on the shelf – ready to go.

“If we had those in front of us, then we could have determined which ones were likely to have the best regenerative effects.”

Councillors also said they felt that some areas of the borough, notably Tredegar and Nantyglo, had not been considered at any stage for projects.

Cllr Mandy Moore felt the model proposed would present more issues to the communities of Blaenau Gwent.

“This hub and spoke effect will be detrimental to the valleys. Essentially, you are ghettoising the surrounding areas,” said the Independent ward member for Tredegar Central and West.

“Basically, that is what we’ve done. We are seeing that to fruition.

“That is the sort of thing we should take back to the Welsh Government now and tell them that we’ve done what they wanted and killed the valleys.

“We need to spend our money the way we want to.”

It was also said the south-east Wales funding share would be split across 10 local authorities and that funding is unlikely to be divided equally across the councils.

The committee deferred approving a report on the programme, citing a lack of information.