RAIL CENTRE: £70m spent, not a pound of private money in, and two ministers in two days won’t say if it’s going ahead

The rail testing centre that was supposed to bring up to 1,000 jobs to the top of the Dulais Valley has had £70m of public money and none from anyone else, the Senedd has been told.

Asked twice in two days whether it will be built, the Welsh Government said a decision is coming “soon” and that the Onllwyn site is being looked at “in the round”.

Andrew RT Davies told the First Minister on Tuesday the project had “burned through £70 million of public money to date” and “not £1 of private money has gone into it”. He put the cost of building it at £350m to £400m.

Rhun ap Iorwerth said work had been commissioned on what had happened to the money and “we need to come to a decision soon”.

“Gift” or purchase?

On Wednesday Janet Finch-Saunders asked Adam Price whether Celtic Energy gave the land or sold it, and who pays if the money to restore the old opencast runs out.

The economy minister said he did not have the answers “at my fingertips” and would take the questions away.

When Neath Port Talbot and Powys councillors approved the scheme in August 2021, the Welsh Government said the land deal would “see Celtic Energy gift all the land necessary for the project”. In 2022 it announced the “formal acquisition” of the site.

Opening date: summer 2025

The government put in £50m, as a loan through Powys Council, and the UK Government £30m, and the government’s published timetable had the centre fully operational by summer 2025. Vaughan Gething, then economy minister, said in 2021 he looked forward to it “progressing at pace over the coming months”.

GCRE Ltd, which the government owns outright, went to the market in January 2023 for an investor to take at least 51% of the company. It has not found one.

Last December the government said it was “prepared to explore how the GCRE project can be further de-risked by virtue of additional public funding or the provision of a guarantee”, and paid for six months of design work.

Data centres on the table

The company is now looking for a partner “that can develop complementary renewable energy and data centre assets at the GCRE site”, according to a profile of its chief executive published by the government’s Trade and Invest Wales in March.

Mr Price told the Senedd the government had “received that specialist advice” and was “discussing with other potential investors what the potential is”. “We’re looking both at the Global Centre of Rail Excellence option, but looking at it in the round as well,” he said.

Ms Finch-Saunders said the government had “inherited a large hole in the ground, a project nobody is prepared to invest in, and, potentially, a very large bill for putting the site back as it was”.

Transport campaigner Dr John McTeague has asked the Auditor General to investigate, in an appeal sent to every Senedd member, saying the money spent is “far in excess” of the Circuit of Wales, which cost £14.9m. Audit Wales told him it had “no immediate plans” to look at the project before the government decides.

Mr ap Iorwerth said: “I’m not going to criticise the concept that came from the current leader of the Labour Party, but we have to understand what has happened as those tens of millions of pounds have been spent on the site, and what maybe hasn’t happened.”

Author

Kit Peters

Kit Peters is a journalist and the editor of Swansea Bay News, covering Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Carmarthenshire since 2020.