The £11m the Chancellor promised Port Talbot in last week’s Budget is to replace the stone bridge that carries shoppers over the Afan at the bottom of Station Road, not to fix Newbridge Road Bridge in Sandfields.
Neath Port Talbot Council put out the clarification on Facebook after what it called “some confusion online” about which bridge the money was for.
The town centre bridge, under the white canopy between the shops and the Civic Centre, is a flood risk, the council said. Replacing it “would help us better protect homes and commercial properties”.
Nothing is signed off yet. The money is subject to a business case being approved, and the council said it would work with the UK Government and give updates as that goes on.
That matters, because the bridge the Chancellor wants replaced has been standing since 1842 and is Grade II listed.
A canal engineer’s bridge that carried the A48, now a walkway with a canopy
Cadw’s listing says the three-arch bridge was built in 1842 to a design by William Kirkhouse, the engineer of the Tennant Canal, and was widened, probably in 1893. It was listed in August 1979.
The listing records that it used to carry the A48 through the town, and describes it now as the link between the Aberavon and Port Talbot shopping centres.
Today it is pedestrianised, with the white fabric canopy on its steel arch overhead and the Civic Centre standing over it on the far bank.
The council has not said whether the old arches would come down or what a new bridge would look like. Any work to a listed building needs listed building consent, so the business case is only the first hurdle.
Flood risk, not falling down: what Neath Port Talbot Council told Facebook
Under the post, one resident asked why the bridge needed “fiddling with” at all, and whether it was falling down.
It replied that the bridge was “unfortunately a flood risk”, adding that replacing it would also “provide opportunities for the future regeneration of surrounding areas while maintaining this important connection through the heart of Port Talbot town centre”.
Others pointed to its age, with one calling it one of the oldest bridges in Wales, and one asked for the canopy to go with it, saying it did nothing but make the rain fall sideways.
The UK Government announced the £11m on 28 October as new funding “to replace the Port Talbot Aberavon Bridge” as part of the town’s regeneration, with the same business case caveat.
Newbridge Road is a separate £13.5m job, and its plans close for comment next week
The mix-up is easy to make, because Port Talbot has a second listed bridge over the same river with a repair scheme of its own. Newbridge Road Bridge, the 1903 crossing between Sandfields and the town, has been shut to everyone since 2016.
Its rebuild for walkers and cyclists is costed at £13.5m, and the council published artist’s impressions last month showing it coming back narrower, with two of its three spans keeping their original ironwork.
That scheme is paid for separately, with £12.16m of Levelling Up money confirmed in July 2025 and £1.35m from the council, and its pre-application consultation runs until 10 November.
So Sandfields gets its bridge back under the existing plan, and the town centre is now in line for a new one. Whether the £11m survives the business case is the next thing to watch.
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