IF THE money can be found, Blaenau Gwent councillors want to see up to £1 million worth of work done on the roads.

At a meeting of Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council’s Place scrutiny committee on Tuesday, September 20, councillors said that not spending anything at all on road maintenance this financial year would be “too negative.”

The report in front of the committee outlined that there was no money to do any improvement works on roads in the county this year.

But two other options explained what could be done if £500,000 or £1 million of funding came Blaenau Gwent’s way

Cllr John Hill said: “I would not be happy to vote for an option where nothing is to be done to the roads and we’ve just accepted it.

“It sounds too negative.

“If we do get money we want these done.”

Committee chairman, Cllr Malcolm Cross wanted some mechanism put in place that would allow councillors to flag up problem areas of road in their wards and feed into the decision-making process.

Cllr Cross said: “All councillors could be part of trying to improve the standard of roads in Blaenau Gwent.”

Committee vice-chairman Cllr Ross Leadbeater said that he understood that there had been talk of a budget underspend that could be used to fund this work.

“Is that right?”, he asked.

Head of community services, Clive Rogers said: “We did look into this and couldn’t find what the reference was – we did put a contingency aside in last year’s highways capital programme for potentially assisting towards the Big Arch, we’ve only just finished that scheme.”

Earlier this month the council announced that the restoration project for the 209-year-old Grade II-listed bridge in Ebbw Vale had been completed.

Mr Rogers said: “In terms of additional money for this element of work in this report I can confidently say there is no money available.”

Councillors agreed and option for  £1 million worth of road surfacing projects and road equipment as part of the Highway Capital Works programme – if the money materialises.

£500,000 road resurfacing work could be done at:

The A467 Warm Turn carriageway;

The top road at Tafarnaubach Industrial estate;

Blaenant Industrial Estate roundabout;

Steelworks Road/General Offices;

A4046 – Waun-Y-Pound Road, Ebbw Vale;

College Road, Ebbw Vale.

And a further £500,000 would be spent on five residential roads, as well as new crash barriers, road markings, signs and bollards, speed humps and traffic order reviews.

The report also looked back at work done from 2017 to 2022.

During that five-year period, a total of £4.75 million was spent on the road network in Blaenau Gwent.

This funding came in annual grants from the Welsh Government and £2.115 million from Blaenau Gwent in the form of a long-term loan.

As part of the programme of work 103 residential highways were resurfaced along with priority works to the A and B classified road network.

According to the report the overall percentage of poor condition unclassified roads before the programme started was 17 per cent.

As a result of the work over the five-year period this has dropped to 11.4 per cent.