Wrexham Council To Borrow £2.1m For Road Repairs

Wrexham Council will borrow £2.1m to invest in road repairs this year as part of a new Welsh Government scheme.

The capital boost will allow the council to address pressures on road maintenance budgets and boost investment in local highway improvement schemes.

A number of posters on our Wrexham.com forums have reported issues with potholes in the county borough over the past few months.

Above is a picture of potholes which have appeared on Cefn Road after April’s heavy rainfall.

The Welsh government is providing Wrexham Council with £147,190 in revenue this year as part of the Local Government Borrowing Initiative so that they can repay the money for the road repairs.

The repayments are said to be comparable to paying off a mortgage and will cost the Welsh government about £240m for the whole of Wales over 22 years.

The scheme has been described as a form of “prudential borrowing” and if successful could be used to plug other public spending funding gaps.

Finance Minister Jane Hutt said: “We know that local authority budgets across Wales are under pressure which is why we have introduced the LGBI. We want to help councils address revenue pressures and see them undertake new and necessary capital investment in our highways.

“By providing Wrexham Council with £147,190 in the first year of the scheme they will be boosting their capital spending by £2.1m this year resulting in immediate improvements to roads and highways. Without our effective collaboration this kind of investment would quite simply have been unaffordable.”