Assembly backs ‘vital’ link to Valleys

06 August 2008

The Welsh Assembly Government has reiterated its support for dualling the entire length of the A465, seen as ‘vital’ to the economic development in the Valleys.

Ieuan Wyn Jones, Welsh minister for economic development and transport, said the timetable for the scheme to upgrade the road from Abergavenny to Hirwaun, approved at a public inquiry in 1998, ‘remains unchanged’.

The assembly government has come under fire for not providing guarantees on the timescale to complete the six phases of the project. The Plaid Cymru minister, writing for a report by think-tank, the Institute of Welsh Affairs, underlined the need for investment to support job creation within the Valleys, rather than relying on Valleys’ residents commuting to Cardiff.

The sections linking Gilwern to Brynmawr and Brynmawr to Tredegar are ‘scheduled to start in the medium-term,’ according to the assembly government, but the remaining two sections have no estimated start period.

Wyn Jones wrote that ‘the idea that the people and wealth of the Valleys drain like rivers to the sea is relatively new… before the Industrial Revolution, communities spread out across the Valleys’. The minister’s comments apparently support those of Steve Fothergill, an academic at Sheffield Hallam, who attacked the ‘common claim’ that the ‘future of the Heads of the Valleys is primarily as a dormitory for Cardiff’.

He wrote in the report that, despite investment in transport connecting the Valleys and Cardiff such as the new rail services to Ebbw Vale, ‘the arithmetic and the distances do not stack up’.

The South Wales Valleys, as a whole, have a population of around 750,000, while Cardiff, with 315,000, ‘is a surprisingly small city to support a very large hinterland,’ claimed Fothergill, who said the Valleys had ‘the most intractable development problems in the UK’.

Instead, he advocated a similar approach as to that taken in the South Yorkshire coalfields, focused on local job creation, and transport links outside urban areas.

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Assembly backs ‘vital’ link to Valleys

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