ROADS, flood alleviation, parks and leisure centres are some of the things Rhondda Cynon Taf Council is planning to spend an extra £7m on.
A report to cabinet (Monday, September 18) and full council (Wednesday, September) recommends councillors agree to spend £7.73m on several investment priorities in the council’s corporate plan.
If approved, it would see an extra £2.5m going towards structures to allow the continuation of the programme of capital repairs and maintenance of more than 1,500 structures including, bridges, culverts, retaining walls, reinforced earth embankments and rock anchors.
It also includes £2m towards extra care and modernising accommodation for older people to support the council continuing its work with partners to deliver its strategy to modernise accommodation options for older people and deliver extra care housing across Rhondda Cynon Taf.
The £1.5m going towards highways and roads “will continue to support the enhanced investment in the council’s largest asset, building on sustained increases in annual funding for highways capital maintenance over recent years,” the report said.
The £550,000 towards the council’s Making Better Use programme and traffic developments will allow continuation of the programme of tackling congestion, pinch points and improving road safety by using the existing road space to provide additional capacity, the report added.
The £400,000 towards leisure centres will support the capital maintenance of leisure buildings to ensure that the building decoration, floor coverings, changing facilities, and sport surfaces are maintained and each leisure facility will benefit from this investment, the council said.
The £300,000 towards parks and green spaces “will allow the ongoing investment programme into the refurbishment of sports pavilions, upgrading of sports pitches and the repairs to parks infrastructure to be enhanced even further” according to the report.
The £200,000 towards flood alleviation works will continue to support small scale works on land drainage and flood alleviation schemes while the £130,000 towards community facilities energy grants would be made available to support energy cost pressures being felt across not for profit community based facilities.
The £100,000 towards town centre enhancements will “support townscape enhancements across our key town centres via a targeted approach to upgrading town centre buildings for increased business and commercial use and continuing to improve the quality of the townscape providing business investment and employment growth” the report said and finally the £50,000 towards street care improvements will include new bins in public spaces.
The report said that the council’s unaudited draft statement of accounts for the year ending March 31, 2023 showed the council has revenue stream earmarked reserves of £93.806m which are set aside for a variety of purposes and there are also specific reserves relating to funding for the existing capital programme and future investment and infrastructure.
The investment and infrastructure reserve is a specific reserve to fund the cost of maintaining and enhancing infrastructure across RCT.
The report said the balance of this reserve at 31 March, 2023 was £24.95m so the proposed investment priorities can be fully funded from this reserve.
