Rhondda Cynon Taf Council has issued another update on the long-delayed Cynon Gateway Link Road, insisting the scheme “remains a commitment” — but a look at the underlying procurement paperwork and trade press coverage shows a project whose start date keeps receding, more than a decade after it was first conceived alongside the A465 Heads of the Valleys dualling scheme.
What the council said today
In its latest statement, the council said a procurement process is now under way to appoint a main contractor for the 1.2km link road, which would connect the A4059 Aberdare Bypass (between Trecynon and Penywaun roundabouts) to the A465 at Croesbychan. Detailed design work is only “planned to start next year,” with the contract award itself not expected until sometime during 2027.
Cabinet member Cllr Andrew Morgan OBE described the procurement exercise as “extensive” and said the project “remains an absolute commitment,” while acknowledging that any work on the ground would likely be limited to advance works supporting the design phase rather than construction proper.
The council pointed to £2.01 million secured this year from Welsh Government via the Cardiff Capital Region, on top of £603,000 already earmarked in its own 2026/27 capital programme, as evidence of momentum.
A start date that keeps moving
The council’s own release is notably light on dates — but public tender documents and trade publications tell a more concrete, and less encouraging, story.
When Rhondda Cynon Taf first relaunched the scheme in October 2025 with a £50m preliminary market engagement, coverage in the Construction Enquirer and Highways Magazine reported that the council was aiming to invite tenders on 3 November 2025, with construction pencilled in to start in May 2026 and run for around three years. Ground Engineering similarly reported that the winning contractor would be engaged on a contract running from May 2026 through to June 2029.
By the time the formal tender notice was published on the Find a Tender service in December 2025, the picture had already shifted: the estimated contract period listed was 31 December 2026 to 31 December 2031 — a five-year term starting a full year later than the May 2026 date floated only weeks earlier, and stretching delivery out to the end of 2031.
Today’s update pushes things further still: the council now says the contract won’t even be awarded until “during 2027,” with detailed design — not construction — following after that. On that timeline, physical construction work would fall later again than the 2031 end-date implied by December’s tender documents.
A project delayed since 2021
The scheme’s history explains the caution. According to the tender documentation itself, Cynon Gateway was originally conceived as a strategic link tied to the Welsh Government’s A465 dualling scheme, and was meant to be delivered by the council alongside that wider project. It was never delivered to that timescale.
A Welsh Government freeze on new road schemes in 2021 stalled the project, and it was then formally shelved in February 2023 when it was placed on a list of local-authority schemes the Roads Review said would not be funded “at that time.” Revised plans re-emerged in August 2024, engineering consultancy AtkinsRéalis was appointed in September 2025 to provide five years of project support, and the £50m contractor search began that October — only for the tendered contract dates to slip again by the time the notice went live in December.
Fifteen years of the same promise
This is not the first time the scheme has been sold as imminent. Local message-board discussions from as far back as March 2011 show residents in the Cynon Valley already discussing an “Aberdare By-Pass Extension” — an earlier name for the same link road — on the strength of a council press release tying it to the dualling of the A465 Heads of the Valleys Road, with a suggested completion date of 2020.
Posters at the time were already sceptical. One pointed out that the scheme’s own council paperwork made its timing “dependent on the dualling of the A465… by the Assembly,” meaning it could not start before the wider trunk-road scheme was under way — a dependency that has effectively persisted for a decade and a half. Another questioned the council’s spending on external consultants for feasibility work, after a firm’s press material illustrating the “Aberdare bypass” study was reportedly photographed in the wrong valley entirely. Estimated costs were also queried: one contributor noted the scheme had been costed at around £10 million in 2007, and predicted it would balloon well beyond that by the time — if ever — building work began.
Fifteen years on, with the current tender putting the scheme’s value at £50m excluding VAT (£60m including VAT), that early scepticism about cost inflation looks to have been broadly vindicated. What’s also notable is how much has already been spent developing a scheme that, on the council’s own admission this week, still has no contractor, no confirmed design, and no construction start date: multiple rounds of consultancy work, a five-year AtkinsRéalis support contract, a formal Roads Review pause and revival, and a procurement process that has itself now run for the best part of a year without a contract being awarded.
The numbers
- Route: 1.2km link road, A4059 Aberdare Bypass to A465 Heads of the Valleys Road at Croesbychan
- Estimated value: £50m excluding VAT (£60m including VAT), per the December 2025 tender
- Funding secured for 2026/27: £2.01m from Welsh Government/Cardiff Capital Region, plus £603,000 from the council’s own capital programme
- Procurement route: Competitive flexible procedure, three phases, enquiry deadline 9 January 2026
- Tendered contract period (Dec 2025 notice): 31 December 2026 – 31 December 2031
- Council’s latest statement (Sept 2026): contractor appointment expected “during 2027”; detailed design to follow
Below from AberdareOnline message board
Posted by Lewis on the 16th March 2011
Well there must be an election due? More bullshit churned out for the Labour voters to believe.
No Russell they can’t build a bypass around Mountain Ash because and this is the Labour council explanation, the reason is because they have built Cwm Cynon Business Park you make your own mind up if there is any sense in that.
http://tinyurl.com/6cbauw7
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Back in 2007 the estimated cost for the Aberdare By Pass Extension was over 10 million you can double that and by the time it is started when most of us have past over to the other side and won’t be around to see, the cost will be over 50 million I expect.
They can’t afford 7 million for a simple bridge in Mountain Ash to ease traffic flows let alone build the Aberdare By Pass Extension.
Tonight 16th March 2011 the Traffic was queuing from the A470 just past the Abercynon roundabout to Mountain Ash Bridge.
I just remembered there is an election in May.
Labour said they were going to build the bridges over 20 years ago can you believe them?
Keep voting Labour you know it makes sense
http://tinyurl.com/5v59ybz
The Aberdare By Pass Extension is largely dependant on the dualling of the A465 Heads of the Valley Road by the Assembly and is also linked to major development proposed for the Hirwaun area. It would not be appropriate to build the Aberdare Bypass Scheme before the A465 dualling is undertaken, because much of the new junction would be removed by the works for the trunk road scheme. Also, the A4059 scheme needs to be designed to tie in to the revised alignment of the A465. Conversely, the scheme should not be built after the A465 dualling because that scheme will rationalise junctions on that route with the three junctions in the Hirwaun area being reduced to one. The opportunity to link into the A465 at the intended junction would, therefore, have been lost. This scheme is particularly linked to the major development site proposed in the Council’s LDP, and is essential for the regeneration of the area. Therefore, whilst this scheme is included in the high priority category, its timing has much less freedom than the others.
Posted by Aroundtown, Mountain Ash on the 17th March 2011
Mountain Ash doesnt need a by pass, there is no issue with through traffic its traffic turning off the A4059 that queue across the Mountain Ash Bridge and back on to the A4059 that then stops the North Bound movements and grid locks the area.
The Aberdare by-pass extension needs based on the reports to be completed in tandem of the building of the A465 duel carriageway.
I gather SEWTA is funding the Aberdare stuff where there is no funding in SEWTA for the bridge in Mt Ash. There is however a chance of EU money for the bridge but when no one knows.
As for the cost of the Aberdare By-Pass it was £10 million a few years ago so with inflation up to 2020 at most it would be is about £16 million not £50 million!!
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