The UK government today announced its spending plans for the next decade. Here’s how the spending review affects Wales.

of the rail funding:
* £300mn is for heavy rail
* £48mn for Welsh Government spending on the Valleys lines
* £97mn in development projects, including redevelopment of Cardiff Central station
* £500mn for Port Talbot’s electric arc furnace funding

Overall there is £29bn in funding for Welsh Government by the end of 2029, the largest real terms funding package ever. Source

Other measures include:
* A further £118mn for coal tip remediation, on top of £44mn in Welsh Government funding and earlier £25mn UK funding last year. Yet below what the Welsh Gov estimate is needed. Source
* devolved governments continue to receive at least 20% more per person than equivalent UK government spending in the rest of the UK
* restoration of the winter fuel payment for pensioners on under £35k
* local growth funds for cohesion, regeneration, and improving public spaces. £211mn of this goes to Wales protected for three years.

What do you make of the measures – more than you expected? Still disappointed?

by orsalnwd

7 comments

  4. Thanks for putting this together, it really lays things out neatly for people to see.

    In my opinion it’s a step in the right direction but there’s still a fair way to go.

    On rail funding:

    – It doesn’t really touch the sides considering HS2 (~£4 billion), Transpennine Route Upgrade (~£1 billion), and Ox-Camb Rail (~£500 million).

    – The fact that the government has changed Ox-Camb from England to England and Wales is appalling considering they said it was impossible to reclassify HS2.

    – The rail money for the core valley lines is over 4 years and the rest over 10 years, so the funding is more along the lines of ~£40 million per year.

    Personally, I would like the rail infrastructure to be devolved which should stop these misclassifications from happening in the future.

    The nice part to see is the coal tip remediation which according to the last figures I saw would cost ~£500 million over 10 – 15 years.

    On the WFA, £35k is too high a bar, particularly when pensioners are likely to be asset rich, own their home outright and we in Wales have around 30% child poverty rates. It would suggest pensioners are untouchable and that we’re becoming a gerontocracy.

  5. Every time you see a labour budget , or they talk about the “massive balck hole in the budget,”

    Remember, Starmer has given Ukraine 10 billion pounds already and had pledged 100 years of this.

    So when that talks about millions for our crumbling infrastructure, remember this .

    Let’s get some perspective on how big 10bn is

    Time Perspective
    – £1 million seconds≈ 11.5 days
    -£1 billion seconds 31.7 years
    -£10 billion seconds** ≈ **317 years
    317 years ago was 1666

    £10bn is double Nasa yearly budget.

    Always money for war.

  6. If this is true then it’s frankly a pretty awful deal.

    “The previous UK Conservative Government invested over £1bn in rail infrastructure in Wales between 2014 and 2024”

  7. Its nice however there have been re-announced some funds and an extended timeline of 10 years which effectively means kicked into the long grass, no actual commitment, will be nice to see if there is anything extra when more of a breakdown is there, better than the conservatives seems to be where they currently are, not a great bar

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