An announcement was made yesterday about the WG's plans to spend 3.5billion over the next few years. The emphasis was to be on growth and the economy with infrastructure to the forefront.

Try as I might I can't find a pithy summary of what those plans are. There is a short piece on the BBC website that refers to a few million for M4 improvements and 500k for domestic violence centres in north Wales but I can't really find anything about the other 3.49 billion.

There is a link to a WG document but it's 100's of pages long and I simply don't have the time to go through it. Any blogs/websites where lazy buggers like me can get some illumination as to on what and where the money is going?

Here is some detail on the plan for roads:
http://nce.co.uk/8630680.article
Edit:bolox,it wants a login. Here is a copy/paste:

Key milestones for major roads infrastructure investments in future years include:

2012 – 2013

Appoint contractors to take forward the A483 in Newtown. Progress the integrated transport measures to improve the A470 and A483 through Builth Wells and plan longer term intervention (beyond 2015). Commence planned improvements to: – A465 Heads of the Valleys Road, section 3 Brynmawr to Tredegar – A477 St Clears to Red Roses – Complete A4226 Five Mile Lane Review the study on the transport issues in the area between Wrexham, Deeside and Chester.

2013 – 2014

Commence delivery of M4 Magor to Castleton post stakeholder engagement options. Improvements to M4 Junction 28 Tredegar Park.

2014 – 2015

Start A465 Heads of the Valleys Road, section 2 Gilwern to Brynmawr.

In addition, the M4 Corridor Enhancement Measures (CEM) programme is examining the options for improvement of the M4 strategic corridor, enhancing its ability to cope with current journey levels and enable more journeys to be made than are now. The M4 CEM programme aims to make travel in south Wales safer, easier and more reliable, through a combination of public transport, highway infrastructure and common measures.

The Welsh Government is seeking views from stakeholders and the public on the improvement options, as part of the M4 CEM Formal Consultation, between March and June 2012. It will be making a formal announcement of how this will be progressed in due course.

So basically nothing new. Take M4 junction 28 (Tredegar Park) as an example - gridlock regularly at rush hour (and even worse since 'improvements' made for the Ryder Cup in 2010) and the commitment is to start construction work on improving it by the end of 2014. I'll look forward to that next time I'm stuck there.

so from what Mr Appeasement has posted it will be £3.5bn of which about £3.49bn will get lost in the Welsh Civil Service money sponge and the rest will find its way towards front line delivery.

its of course essential to have governance and control of the public purse and its good to see WG leading the world in this regard.

how can a country as small as Wales achieve so little with £3.5bn?

couldn't they just build the Severn barrage and start making some money from charging the rest of the UK for Welsh owned elastic trickery

At risk of echoing Karl's comments earlier....maybe I'm just lazy or stoopid, or maybe it's because I haven't the dedicated enthusiasm to spend hours looking for the detailed information that was announced yesterday, but all I can find to date on the new £15 billion 10-year National Infrastructure Investment Plan – announced yesterday by the Welsh Finance Minister, Jane Hutt is the following info (from an independent web page http://www.clickonwales.org/2012/05/infrastructure/):


The Welsh Government’s £44m of new investment for 2012-13

£2.7m for M4 junction improvements
£3m for NEST and £2m for the Arbed scheme benefiting an extra 1000 homes
£6m to expand the successful Welsh Housing Partnership, levering in an investment of £30m in total to deliver 280 family homes for intermediate rent
£5m to double the size of the recyclable empty homes fund, contributing to our target of bringing 5,000 empty homes back into use during this Assembly term
£4m to accelerate essential flood protection schemes, reducing the impact of flood and coastal erosion on communities
£6.8m to accelerate major hospital projects at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd and Llandough
£500k to deliver premises for domestic abuse ‘One Stop Shops’ in Pembrokeshire, Swansea and Gwynedd
£5m to support schools projects in in Lampeter, Denbighshire, Abercynon and Penarth
£3m for the new Cardiff City Centre post-16 campus
£3.5m to support essential infrastructure work for the Northern Gateway site in the Deeside Enterprise Zone
£2.5m to boost the Welsh Economic Growth Fund
A commitment of £4million a year of funding for thirty years to support a Welsh Housing Bond issue of over £100m, which will finance delivery of more than 1,000 affordable homes over the next four years.


Which M'lud, begs the pressing question 'Where's the fooking rest of the dosh (ie 99% or £14,920,000,000)going?'

Wizard

Tee £14.9bn - That'll be the cost of employing more Welsh CS staff to administer, manage and oversee the projects you have outlined.

Who says we don't get value for money