A £1.5 MILLION windfall will be spent on repairing potholes, new equipment and improving play parks, councillors have agreed.
Welsh councils were awarded additional funds for capital funding, for one-off investments, at the end of the last financial year by the outgoing Welsh Government.
That funding provided Torfaen Borough Council with an extra £1.506m to be spent in the current financial year.
As well as highway repairs and road safety improvements councillors, at their July meeting, approved spending on maintenance and clearing the Brecon and Monmouthshire Canal and cemetery expansion.
The council’s Labour leader Anthony Hunt said: “I believe this reflects the priorities in the chamber and communities and means more resurfacing and road repairs, a cleaner borough and play park, canal and cemetery improvements.”
The Panteg councillor said even with the additional funding the council still isn’t able to meet all the demands on it. He said: “The list of things to do is much longer than the resources we have.”
The largest single allocation of the £1.5m is the £500,000 to be spent on large scale patching of potholes, which was proposed by the cabinet in June when it considered how to allocate unspent funds from the 2025/26 which included the extra capital funding awarded at the end of the financial year.
A report for the council stated: “Investing in further large-scale patching will help to address the maintenance backlog within the highways network and improve the condition of the roads being used on a daily basis by residents.”
In addition the council will spend £50,000 on road resurfacing equipment and £105,000 in street cleaning equipment to improve efficiency and which means the council can carry out more work in-house without needing external contractors.
The £216,000 investment in cemeteries will help to ensure future demand for cemetery space can be met.
The road safety works, totalling £250,000 are described as improvements for pedestrians and drivers, while £235,000 is awarded for play park improvements with £150,000 allocated to canal improvements.