The Welsh Government announced, as part of its three-year budget, that it will provide funding to support coal tip safety and support their remediation, reclamation and repurposing, with an additional £4.5m and total capital investment of £44.4m.
The news follows the UK Government’s decision not to provide funding of its own in October’s Spending Review.
Earlier in the year, the Welsh Government published a breakdown of the 2,456 identified tips in Cymru split into risk categories and by local authority.
The data shows that Castell-nedd Port Talbot has the greatest number of sites at 607 but that Rhondda Cynon Taf has the most sites classified as being at higher risk at 75.
Higher risk sites fall under categories C and D which recognise there is a potential to cause risk to safety, not that there is an imminent or immediate threat – it means that more frequent inspections are scheduled.