HEOL GOFFA ROW: Plaid accuses Labour of causing ‘unnecessary distress’ over special school claims

Plaid Cymru’s education cabinet member has accused Labour councillors in Llanelli of causing “unnecessary alarm and distress” to parents and staff at Ysgol Heol Goffa — escalating the row over funding for the town’s promised £35m special school.

The row erupted after Wednesday’s full council meeting, when Labour claimed a “£35m black hole” sat beneath the plans after Cllr Glynog Davies confirmed funding for the project had not yet been formally committed by either the council or the Welsh Government.

In a statement issued on Friday, Cllr Davies branded the Labour claims “unfounded” — and said the suggestion that the new school may not go ahead was an insinuation made for political ends.

“They obviously don’t understand, or choose to misrepresent the process, for cheap political purposes,” he said.

“Work on designing the larger 150 pupil school on a new site is well advanced, so I can assure parents, staff and learners that there is no intention to pull out now. Changing government in Cardiff has no bearing on this, because government funding depends on presenting the full business case, which will happen shortly.”

The cabinet member reserved his sharpest words for Llanelli Labour town councillor Shaun Greaney — a longstanding campaigner on the school — over what Cllr Davies said was an accusation that Plaid councillors had “an old-fashioned attitude to children with special needs”.

“It’s quite shocking that Cllr Shaun Greaney, who seems to live in a constant state of outrage, should accuse Plaid councillors of having ‘an old-fashioned attitude to children with special needs’,” he said. “Moving ahead with a larger new school, costing tens of millions of pounds, disproves his allegations.”

And he linked Labour’s attacks to the party’s performance in last month’s Senedd election: “I appreciate that Labour must be in trauma after their devastating losses in the Senedd elections, but for them to cause unnecessary distress on this issue is reprehensible.”

Labour’s claims followed the chamber exchange in which Cllr Davies confirmed funding had not yet been signed off. Labour opposition group leader Cllr Deryk Cundy said afterwards: “Clearly, despite all the public fanfares, no money has been actually committed to the new Ysgol Heol Goffa. My biggest fear is that Plaid will claim again — at some point in the future — that it doesn’t have enough money to proceed with the new school, as they have in the past.”

Cllr Greaney had said the school community would be “devastated” if the funding position set out in the chamber was correct — adding: “Personally, I think they are a disgrace and should all resign.”

Under the Welsh Government’s Sustainable Communities for Learning programme, the council would pay a quarter of the cost of the new school with the government contributing 75 per cent — but the government’s share is only confirmed once the council submits a full business case, which Cllr Davies says “will happen shortly”.

The school for pupils with additional learning needs was first promised a replacement building a decade ago. The council scrapped the previous plans in May 2024 citing rising costs — prompting a petition of more than 9,000 signatures — before re-committing in 2025 to a £35m, 150-place school near Ysgol Pen Rhos, with a planned opening of September 2029.

The formal consultation on the proposals is open until Tuesday 21 July.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

LLANELLI: ‘£35m black hole’ row erupts over Ysgol Heol Goffa funding — days after consultation opens
The full council exchange — and what it means for families.

LLANELLI: Consultation opens on £35m Ysgol Heol Goffa rebuild — two years after council scrapped the last one
How to have your say on the proposals.

LLANELLI: £35m new Ysgol Heol Goffa to open in 2029 after years of uncertainty — but funding question hangs over Plaid Cymru government
Our report from May on the school’s long road to approval.

SENEDD: Local Reform members split in childcare row — and Plaid’s flagship policy ‘could cost £710m’

Plaid Cymru’s flagship childcare policy is at the centre of the new Senedd’s first major row — one that has split Reform UK‘s local members down the middle and set the chamber’s two largest opposition parties at each other’s throats.

The universal offer — 20 hours of funded childcare a week, 48 weeks a year, for all children aged nine months to four — was the centrepiece of Plaid’s election campaign, and is billed by the Welsh Government as the most generous in the UK.

It was Reform’s own debate on the policy on Wednesday that lit the fuse — and the party’s Swansea Bay and Carmarthenshire members ended up on opposite sides.

Steven Rodaway, Reform Member for Gŵyr Abertawe, voted for the final, amended motion — while his party colleague in the same constituency, Francesca O’Brien, voted against.

The split was repeated in Sir Gaerfyrddin, where Carmelo Colasanto backed the amended motion while fellow Reform Members Gareth Beer and Sarah Edwards opposed it — and David Mills and Iain McIntosh, Reform Members for Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd, which takes in Pontardawe and the Swansea Valley, also voted in favour.

In all, 11 of Reform’s 34 Members backed the final motion, 21 voted against and one abstained.

The sequence matters. Reform’s original motion — demanding the Welsh Government publish full costings and an implementation timetable for the policy — was defeated by 39 votes to 52, with only the Welsh Conservatives in support.

An amendment from Plaid Cymru’s Heledd Fychan then deleted Reform’s wording and replaced it — inserting a line noting that “Reform UK had no commitments on childcare in its Welsh manifesto”. It passed by 50 votes to 41 with Conservative support, and every Reform Member present, including the 11, voted against it.

It was the final vote — on the motion as amended, which by then also recognised the Welsh Government’s commitment to provide an update on the policy’s initial costings and phasing — that split the Reform group, passing by 61 votes to 29.

The Welsh Conservatives pounced. Sam Rowlands, the party’s shadow minister for education and families, said better childcare had been a key part of his party’s manifesto and that it would “vote with any party seeking to increase childcare provision”.

“What surprised everyone was that 11 Reform MSs voted with us and Plaid to attack their own party,” he said. “Either Reform MSs have no idea what they were doing or one third have decided to attack their own party. Either way it does not suggest that they are a party ready for Government.”

Reform hit back within hours — in a letter to Conservative leader Darren Millar from Llŷr Powell, the party’s Member for Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni, accusing the Conservatives of voting with Plaid Cymru to “delete” Reform’s motion demanding the costings.

Mr Powell turned Mr Rowlands’ own debate words back on him — “If a policy is genuinely affordable, then publishing those full costings should strengthen confidence in it, not weaken it” — and asked whether it was “now Welsh Conservative policy to give the Plaid Government a blank cheque on the implementation of all of their policies”.

The letter opened with a barb about Mr Millar’s absence — “I hope you’re well, given your absence from the Chamber yesterday” — and the voting record shows the Conservative leader did not vote in any of the four divisions.

Reform also escalated the costs argument — publishing a costing paper, produced under the party’s Reform Wales branding and described by its shadow finance minister Cai Parry-Jones as independent, claiming the childcare offer would cost between £388m and £710m a year at full rollout, with a central estimate of £587m and a cost across this Senedd term of nearly £1.4bn.

That is far above the figure of around £400m a year cited in the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ post-election briefing — a figure Reform’s paper claims does not appear in Plaid’s manifesto and “appears to have been supplied” to the IFS by the party. The IFS itself warned last month that finding £400m a year “would likely require cutbacks to other services or increases in taxation”.

The debate itself saw criticism of the government’s timetable from across the chamber — Welsh Labour’s Lynne Neagle said the Senedd had heard “warm words and vague timelines”, while Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Jane Dodds said it was “very perplexing” that Reform had brought the motion despite having made no childcare commitment in its own manifesto.

Plaid’s Sarah Rees went on the attack over Reform’s record on the issue, describing a claim made by one of the party’s candidates during the election campaign — that abuse in nurseries would rise under expanded childcare — as “misogyny and fearmongering, plain and simple”.

The minister delivering the policy is also a local voice — Deputy First Minister Sioned Williams, Plaid Member for Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd, representing the same constituency as two of the 11 Reform Members who backed the amended motion.

The day before the debate, she unveiled an Expert Steering Group to drive the rollout, with 12.5 hours of funded childcare for all two-year-olds delivered first — saying the offer would “help families with the cost of living” and “give all children the best start in life”.

Swansea Bay News asked Mr Rodaway and Mr Colasanto why they voted for the amended motion having opposed the amendment itself, and asked the Reform UK Senedd group whether the vote had been a free vote. No responses had been received by our deadline; any received will be added to this article.

Childcare was a prominent theme across nearly every party’s manifesto at May’s election — and with Plaid governing as a minority in a 96-seat chamber, Wednesday’s debate is unlikely to be the last time the arithmetic produces a result nobody quite intended.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

SENEDD ELECTION 2026: The new political map of Wales
How May’s election transformed the region’s representation.

SIR GAERFYRDDIN: Reform UK and Plaid Cymru take three seats each as Welsh Labour wiped out
The election-night result that reshaped Carmarthenshire’s representation.

GŴYR ABERTAWE: What can Swansea expect from new Plaid Cymru MS Gwyn Williams?
Our profile of one of the constituency’s new Members.

AMMANFORD: County’s only nursery school to close — taking Carmarthenshire’s last full-time nursery places with it
The childcare provision story on the ground as the policy row plays out in Cardiff Bay.

Plaid rules out Newport M4 relief road as minister promises ‘balanced package’ of road, rail and bus

The Plaid Cymru-led Welsh Government has ruled out building a relief road around Newport to ease congestion on the M4 — months after its leader campaigned on backing a new road for the route.

The M4 around Newport is used daily by drivers from across south Wales, including those travelling east from Swansea, Neath Port Talbot and Carmarthenshire.

Opened in 1967, the Brynglas Tunnels at Newport were originally designed to handle 30,000 vehicles a day. They now regularly carry over 75,000, making this stretch one of the most famous congestion hotspots in the UK.

In a statement to the Senedd, Deputy Minister for Transport Mark Hooper described the corridor as “one of the most constrained and heavily used transport corridors in Wales”.

He said it continued to “operate beyond capacity, particularly at peak times”, with long-standing problems of congestion, resilience and reliability.

The minister was blunt about the most contentious option.

“To be clear, this government does not believe the Black Route is a credible option,” he said — referring to the proposed six-lane motorway bypass south of Newport, scrapped by the previous Labour government in 2019 at an estimated £1.6bn.

Instead, he announced “a short, focused programme of work to explore realistic options across road, rail and bus interventions”, drawing on existing analysis rather than commissioning a new review.

“The answer is not another external review that kicks the can down the road one more time,” he said.

The work would include accelerating public transport alternatives, targeted measures to improve traffic flow on the existing road network, and better integration between local and national transport systems.

The announcement puts Plaid Cymru’s own position in the spotlight.

During the election campaign, party leader and now First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth told a leaders’ debate that he supported building a new road to tackle congestion at the Brynglas Tunnels.

“We believe that a response is needed to improve traffic on the M4 around the Brynglas Tunnels,” he said at the time. “Currently we don’t have a plan. What a Plaid Cymru government would do is put that plan together.”

He pointed to a cheaper alternative rather than the Black Route itself, and argued that investment in rail alone would not resolve the congestion. The M4 did not feature in Plaid’s election manifesto.

Proposals to relieve congestion around Newport date back decades, with a relief road south of the city first floated in the 1990s. Plans firmed up under Welsh Government backing for the so-called “Black Route” — a 14-mile, six-lane motorway south of Newport, including a new bridge over the River Usk.

After an 83-day public inquiry, the entire scheme was scrapped in 2019 by then-First Minister Mark Drakeford, who said it was too costly, at an estimated £1.6bn, and too damaging to the environment.

A subsequent expert commission instead recommended a “network of alternatives”, focused on new rail stations and public transport rather than new motorway.

The debate has rumbled on since. Last year, renewed calls for a Newport bypass were rejected by the Senedd, after a Conservative motion failed to win support from Labour, Plaid Cymru or the Liberal Democrats.

Closer to home, the Welsh Government said last year it would look again at M4 junction improvements around Swansea after pressure in the Senedd.

The minister said he would report back to members on the M4 work “in Plenary early in the autumn term”.

The statement also covered transport problems in north Wales, including repeated closures of the 200-year-old Menai Suspension Bridge between Ynys Môn and the mainland.

The minister said the bridge had shut several times in recent weeks after drivers ignored a 7.5 tonne weight limit, forcing precautionary safety inspections.

He said works to stabilise and refurbish the bridge were due to be completed in spring 2027, and that the government would now “start looking at detailed options for a third Menai crossing”.

He acknowledged the disruption had caused “deep frustration, and increasing anger” among those affected.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

Renewed calls for Newport M4 bypass rejected by Senedd
A Conservative motion for a bypass failed to win cross-party support.

Welsh Government to look again at Swansea M4 junction improvements
Ministers agreed to revisit congestion relief at the Swansea end of the M4.

Commission proposes rail stations as alternative to M4 bypass
The expert panel recommended a network of public transport alternatives.

GREEN STEEL DELAY: Cross-party calls for answers over Port Talbot furnace setback as politicians press Tata and National Grid

The delay to Port Talbot’s new electric arc furnace has prompted a cross-party call for answers at the Senedd, with members pressing both Tata Steel and the National Grid.

The £1.25bn furnace, central to the future of steelmaking in the town, could be held up by up to eight months because of delays to the power infrastructure the National Grid is building to run it.

Elyn Stephens, Plaid Cymru MS for Afan Ogwr Rhondda, said the delay was “another blow to the communities I represent”.

She said it meant a longer wait for much-needed jobs and economic regeneration, and created further uncertainty for local residents.

“I have contacted Tata directly this afternoon and will be making further representations tomorrow,” she said.

“People in Port Talbot deserve honesty and transparency about when this development is expected to be delivered.”

Huw Irranca-Davies, Labour MS for Afan Ogwr Rhondda, said the news — coming on top of the recent fire at the works — had caused understandable concern for the workforce, unions and the wider supply chain across Wales.

He said he had already been in contact with Tata to seek assurances that the transition to electric steelmaking was proceeding and that the jobs relying on it were protected.

Irranca-Davies said he understood Tata might issue a further statement in the coming days, which he hoped would offer reassurance that the difficulties would be overcome.

He added that he had accepted a place alongside other local members on the Tata Transition Board, and had asked the UK government and the new Welsh Government — including the Cabinet Minister for Enterprise, Adam Price — to support the move to electric arc production.

The delay also drew comment from the Welsh Conservatives. Janet Finch-Saunders, the party’s shadow minister for enterprise, connectivity and energy, called the situation “deeply concerning”.

She said the furnace was “a vital investment for the future of Welsh steelmaking, jobs and economic growth”, and that the National Grid and the UK government “must urgently work together to resolve these connectivity issues and ensure this strategically important project is delivered without further delay”.

The interventions follow a similar call from David Rees, the former Aberavon MS who chaired the Senedd’s cross-party group on steel, who said the National Grid should face penalties if the connection slipped further.

The electric arc furnace is designed to make lower-carbon “green steel” by melting scrap rather than burning coal, replacing the blast furnaces that closed in 2024 with the loss of around 2,000 jobs — part of a wider £1.25bn transformation of the works.

It relies on a major grid upgrade — including a major substation expansion approved by the council earlier this year — which the National Grid has said is running late because of ground conditions and planning issues.

Tata has said the project timeline “continues to evolve” and that it is working to deliver the furnace “safely and as quickly as possible”.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

GREEN STEEL: Port Talbot’s £1.25bn furnace could be delayed by up to eight months over power hold-up
Tata’s warning over the delayed grid connection.

GREEN STEEL DELAY: Former Aberavon MS says National Grid should face penalties
David Rees calls for penalties if the connection slips further.

‘Green power’ boost for Port Talbot as council green-lights major substation expansion
The substation upgrade central to powering the new furnace.

STEELWORKS FIRE: Tata says blaze restricted to ‘confined area’ of Cold Mill
A separate fire at the site earlier this month.

#YouGov has published a fascinating breakdown of how Wales voted in the 2026 #Senedd election by key demographic and political divides. Full details at https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54913-how-wales-voted-at-the-2026-senedd-election

#PlaidCymru’s support was higher among younger voters, those with higher levels of both education and household income, while being highest of all among those who are fluent in Welsh.

#welshpol #Cymru #ukpol

ht @leannewood

#Cymru for all! #Pride hapus! 🌈🏳️‍🌈

(From the #PlaidCymru Facebook page. Such a shame they're not on Mastodon).

LEE WATERS: Architect of Wales’ 20mph law admits it ‘came at a price’ as he warns Labour faces ‘existential crisis’

The former Senedd member who masterminded Wales’ default 20mph speed limit has admitted the policy “came at a price” as he warned that Welsh Labour now faces an “existential crisis.”

Lee Waters, who served as a Welsh Government transport minister and held the Llanelli seat for a decade, said watching his party’s collapse at last month’s election had been a “painful and frustrating experience.”

Labour was reduced to just nine seats on 7 May, finishing third behind Plaid Cymru on 43 and Reform UK on 34 — its worst result since Welsh devolution began in 1999.

Waters described it as a “slow-motion car crash,” and said the party had been “saved from wipe out” by the narrowest of margins.

“We came within 4,000 votes of the Conservatives, that’s how bad it was,” he told BBC Radio Wales’ Sunday Supplement.

The former minister said there was “no single reason why Labour collapsed,” but argued that confronting the scale of the defeat had to come first.

“This is an existential crisis and I think Labour now needs to go back to first principles and rethink what it is for,” he said.

It was Waters who, as deputy minister, drove through the law setting a default 20mph limit on Wales’ restricted roads — a policy that drew one of the largest petitions in Senedd history and became a lightning rod for opposition across the Swansea, Carmarthenshire and Neath Port Talbot areas.

Asked about its role in the defeat, he did not shy away from it. “There are things like 20mph that definitely took up a lot of political capital and caused a lot of difficulty,” he said.

“We took a hit for that, you know, I’m not denying that. It’s achieved great things, but it’s come at a price.”

Waters stood down at the election. His old Llanelli constituency was abolished under the new Senedd boundaries and absorbed into the enlarged six-member Sir Gaerfyrddin seat, which combines the Caerfyrddin and Llanelli Westminster areas and now covers the whole of Carmarthenshire. Plaid Cymru and Reform UK took all six seats there.

His warning echoes the reckoning already under way among Labour figures closer to home. Swansea MS Mike Hedges, one of the nine Labour members left standing, drew criticism after appearing to blame the media for the result, telling a reporter outside the Senedd they had “got the result you wanted.”

Hedges, who held the Gŵyr Abertawe seat, had earlier warned that Wales could face another election within a year as the party counted the cost of its historic defeat.

Waters also turned to the challenges now facing the new Plaid Cymru government, suggesting the move from opposition to power would force difficult choices.

He pointed to First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth’s pledge to tackle congestion on the M4 with a “roads-based solution,” after Labour shelved plans for an M4 relief road around Newport in 2019.

“Will it be easy to deliver? No, it won’t, nor will it be cheap,” Waters said, adding that in opposition a party is “not forced to confront the trade-offs” that come with governing.

A Welsh Labour spokesperson said the results had been “catastrophic” and that the party needed time to determine what went wrong.

“Voters raised serious issues about NHS access, roads, local services, cost of living and trust in politics,” the spokesperson said. “These are the issues people live with every day and they felt we weren’t doing anything to help. We can’t ignore that.”

Before entering the Senedd, Waters was head of the active travel charity Sustrans Cymru — a background that shaped his championing of walking, cycling and lower urban speeds throughout his time in government.

The 20mph law remains in force, though the new Welsh Government has faced continued pressure over its implementation.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

SENEDD ELECTION: Mike Hedges warns Wales could face another election next year as Labour count the cost of historic defeat
The Swansea MS on Labour’s reckoning after its worst-ever Senedd result.

SWANSEA: Mike Hedges should quit Senedd seat for Rob Stewart, senior Welsh Labour figure says
The internal Labour tensions that preceded the election.

‘Respect the democratic vote’: Rob Stewart backs Mike Hedges after anonymous Welsh Labour call for him to quit
Rob Stewart steps in over the call for Hedges to stand aside.

MUMBLES: Plaid MS calls on politicians to cut ties with ‘toxic’ far-right group over skate park racism video

A Plaid Cymru MS has called on politicians across all parties to cut ties with a far-right group, after it posted a video about the NHS doctor racially abused near Mumbles skate park.

Gwyn Williams MS, one of the three Plaid Cymru Members of the Senedd for Gŵyr Abertawe, said the group should be shut out of mainstream politics altogether.

His intervention puts the focus on his constituency counterpart Francesca O’Brien MS, the Reform UK member who was among the first politicians to condemn the original abuse. Asked whether she would join the call and for her view on the video, O’Brien set out the steps she has taken since the incident.

Dr Haroon Ali, a Swansea NHS doctor, described being subjected to racist abuse near the skate park on Saturday 16 May while leaving with his two sons, aged five and two. He said three teenagers on bikes and scooters shouted a racial slur at the family repeatedly, and South Wales Police are investigating the incident as a hate crime.

In his original public account, Dr Ali said he had “no doubt” that certain local politicians had contributed to a rise in overt racism in the area, and called on them to stand firm in opposing it.

Williams said Voice of Wales had since produced a video that he described as victim-blaming the doctor. He said the group had targeted Dr Ali because of his activity for the Labour Party — something Williams said “in no way lessens what happened” and had made the episode worse for the family.

“I believe the Voice of Wales had no place in the legitimate political processes of our country and it behoves all politicians to distance themselves from this toxic group of people,” Williams said.

He said the responsibility for challenging racism lay with everyone. “It is our duty to call out racism whenever we see it and that includes with our own friends and family,” he said. “The path to an equal society begins at home.”

Williams added that the incident did not define the city. “Swansea is a good city full of good people and the extremists do not represent us,” he said.

He said he could not comment on the specifics of the case because it was a police matter, but urged anyone who experienced racist abuse to report it and not to be deterred by far-right activity online.

O’Brien, a former Mumbles councillor who was named Reform UK’s shadow minister for Local Government, Housing and Planning this month, condemned the abuse in the strongest terms when the story first broke.

In a statement to Swansea Bay News this week, she said: “Racism is intolerable, unacceptable, and has no place in our communities or anywhere in society.” She said her priority had been to support those affected and to bring people together.

O’Brien said she had invited Dr Ali to work with her on a constructive community response, and had not wanted the matter to “descend into an angry social media debate that ultimately achieves very little and risks creating further division.”

She said she had contacted the local Neighbourhood Policing Inspector to offer her support, and that the inspector had not been aware of the incident when they spoke. Police have since shared a social media appeal for witnesses.

O’Brien said that on 20 May she had given Dr Ali several dates when she would be available to meet, and that she was “currently awaiting a response” from him.

She also said she had been in contact with Mumbles Community Council, which manages the skate park, about CCTV. O’Brien said she had learnt that Swansea Council had not granted the community council permission to use nearby lampposts to install cameras, and that she would continue to press the matter.

In her response, O’Brien focused on the practical steps she has taken rather than the video or Williams’s call for politicians to disavow the group. She said that “while other politicians are keen to discuss other media outlets and are clearly more interested in me thanking members of the public, on a post I was tagged in, I am getting on with the job.”

Williams was elected for Gŵyr Abertawe on 7 May, when Plaid Cymru topped the poll in the constituency.

Voice of Wales said it was an independent media team that questioned politicians of all parties, and rejected the idea that anyone needed to “cut ties” with it. “That’s easy — there are no ties. We don’t work with any party,” it said, adding that it was entitled to approach elected representatives and ask questions as a free press.

The Chief Officer of Mumbles Community Council said they were “deeply concerned” by reports of racial abuse in the community, adding that behaviour leaving people feeling intimidated or unwelcome “has no place here.”

The community council urged people to report any hate-related incidents to police, and asked that online discussion remain “calm, constructive and respectful” rather than becoming “politically divisive.”

It also pointed to positive work locally, including the Flip the Streets project, which challenges racism and anti-social behaviour through youth engagement and art. A community mural day was due to be held at the skate park on Sunday, with young people helping to transform the site.

Anyone with information about the incident on Saturday 16 May can contact South Wales Police on 101, quoting reference 2600152970. Information can also be passed anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

Related stories from Swansea Bay News

MUMBLES: ‘My sons were shocked and scared’ — NHS doctor speaks out after racist abuse near Mumbles skate park
The Swansea NHS doctor’s account of the abuse that sparked a police hate crime investigation.

SWANSEA: Francesca O’Brien handed housing and planning brief as Reform UK names its first ever Senedd shadow cabinet
The Gŵyr Abertawe MS’s appointment to Reform UK’s first shadow cabinet.

Funding secured for Mumbles skatepark
How more than £270,000 of National Lottery funding helped build the skate park.

Community council asks for views on Mumbles skatepark
The consultation on the park’s future development.