Newport City Council leader on £6.6m city roadworks
Those 'bread-and-butter' services, the doorstep issues that we all encounter every day, are at the top of our residents' agenda, so they needed to be at the top of our agenda too.
One of those issues is the state of our roads.
This is something we hear a lot about from residents, and back when we set our budget in February, we promised more investment into our road network.
This week, we've announced that we are delivering on that promise.
We will be investing £6.6m into our roads over the next 12 months.
This investment will support a major programme of road maintenance works, focusing on our most critical and high-priority roads.
These include Malpas Road, Newport Bridge, Lighthouse Road, Chepstow Road and many more.
Councillors from every ward have been sharing residents' concerns about roads with us. We've heard those concerns, and we get it.
That's why we're putting this programme in place.
We have secured around £4.4m from the Welsh Government to help finance the programme. They share our agenda of wanting to get things done, things that make a difference to people, and I'm grateful for the support they have shown us.
Their support will allow us to go above and beyond what we would be able to do on our own.
We will also be allocating around £2.2m of our own resources to the programme, including £1m from underspend from last financial year.
It is not going to solve every problem and fix every pothole, as we can only do so much with the resources we have.
It is, however, a really good programme of works which I do feel will make a big difference to residents and visitors alike.
And we will keep delivering to ensure that those 'bread-and-butter' services are always meeting our residents' needs.
You can find more information about the programme, including the full list of roads we will be working on, in the newsroom on the council's website.
Something else we announced last week was that the city's recycling rate has smashed a new record high of 71.45 per cent.
This is a fabulous achievement and one that positions Newport as one of the best performing cities in Wales and the UK for recycling.
This wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for the efforts of our residents, and we are very grateful for their efforts.
So, I just wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone reading this. Your efforts, no matter how small or how large, do make a massive difference to our city.
Dimitri Batrouni is leader of Newport City Council.
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