CEREDIGION council pours nearly £5m into a pointless seafront scheme in Aberystwyth that no-one wants and will deprive the town of scores of valuable parking spaces.

Now the authority is squandering the remaining £6m-plus of Ceredigion’s badly needed levelling-up funding. 

Squandering, because this hefty slab of public cash is not going to be ploughed into anything of direct and immediate social or economic benefit. 

As would be the case rescuing from dereliction once-fine Aberystwyth town centre buildings that lie mouldering away but could easily, with public funding on this scale, be transformed into urgently needed housing. 

Instead, £6.03m of levelling-up cash will be lavished on the already wildly overspent, and behind schedule, Old College scheme. Specifically, and quite wrongly, on paying the fees of various professionals working on the project.

With its promise of a cornucopia of cultural and enterprise functions and a four-star hotel, renovation and development of the grade-one-listed seafront pile was meant to have been finished two years ago to coincide with Aberystwyth University’s 150th anniversary - at a cost of £27m.

That price-tag, however, quickly morphed into a work of fiction. 

The Old College scheme, launched by the university in early 2020, initially attracted £10m lottery funding, bolstered by £3m from the Welsh government, and £3m from the European Regional Development Fund. But it was all no more than a hefty downpayment.

By 2022, the project’s cost had leapt by £9m - to £36m and, from then on, the multiplication factor went berserk, with the result that, by last year, the price had skyrocketed by a further £8.1m - to a dizzying £44.1m.

But even that has been insufficient to satisfy this most cash-guzzling of ventures. 

Because, unknown to everyone except Aberystwyth University insiders, that £44.1m number was put on steroids. And, keen to oblige, it duly rose…to £54.303m.

In four years, the cost of the scheme has, very neatly, doubled. 

The university tells me: “Like many projects of this size and complexity, it has evolved significantly since the first bid for funding was made in 2019. Early challenges included the Covid-19 pandemic, Brexit and the war in Ukraine, all of which have restricted the supply of building materials and services and triggered significant inflationary pressures across the construction sector in recent years.”

The Ukraine war. How often have we heard that one? But what the university does not acknowledge is its near-secrecy over what has been going on financially. 

Just like the - to date - doubling in the cost of the Old College project; the latest increase, please note, has been another neat hike - a shade over £10m.

Really not a sum worth mentioning to the outside world, the university seems to think. And so it is that word about the latest price leap appears to have been confined to seven lines in a report to the university council.

The report blames inflation, “additional costs due to the extension of time likely to be required; and the increased expenditure on professional fees.”

That levelling-up money is being spent on such fees is, in itself, of strong and legitimate public interest. The fact that this information has been confined to an obscure report means that, effectively, it has been suppressed.

The university also says: “Every moment and every pound spent in pursuit of this magnificent attraction is an important investment in the future of Aberystwyth and the mid-Wales region, and the university is grateful for the support it receives from the community…”

This comes across as rather treacly waffle. If the university genuinely regarded “the community” as close to its heart it would have been open about this project’s rapidly increasing costs.

If only because the university will now be in receipt of £6m public money which, to an unknown extent, will be spent on something as inappropriate as fees.

Frankly, this is outrageous. Levelling-up cash is supposed to be about improving the lives of ordinary people, not about settling the invoices of highly paid professionals, not about fattening the bank balances of already handsomely remunerated designers and architects.

Once again, Plaid Cymru-led Ceredigion council  demonstrates its wretched decoupling from the priorities of the 70,000-odd people it’s meant to represent.

For far too many of those people, housing is a perpetual, gnawing problem. How wrong it is therefore that the £6m now being funnelled into the financially overstuffed Old College project is at the expense of a human requirement as basic as housing. 

Here was a clear opportunity to instead rescue for the benefit of homeless people some of the many town centre buildings in Aberystwyth gradually falling into rack and ruin, including long-empty shops.

Such places are crying out to be restored and turned into comfortable flats, at the same time saving, in some cases, valuable pieces of Aberystwyth’s built heritage, while making inroads into the scruffiness that blights so much of the town.

An opportunity very sadly missed.

CEREDIGION MS Elin Jones joins the ranks of the legions protesting over Ceredigion council’s crackpot scheme to obliterate Aberystwyth seafront parking places, while spending nearly £5m on a cycle-path to nowhere.

She tells me: “Parking and transport issues around Abersywtyth have needed an overhaul for years. Trying to combine resident, student, commuter and visitor parking into a small number of car-parks and predominantly narrow streets has always been a problem. 

“I would have liked to see the council tackle this with a holistic plan for parking in all of Aberystwyth, rather than a piecemeal approach led by financial pressures. If something is changed in one part of town to reduce or discourage car use, then it will only shift the problem elsewhere. 

“I’d like to see current plans paused and a proper plan developed for the whole town, to include around-town public transport options. Such a discussion should include a full consultation with every interested party: residents, town councillors, university, town employers, businesses and workers.”

Well, yes, absolutely. Perhaps she’d like to promote this rather sensible message to her less clear-sighted Plaid colleagues on the county council. In particular the imperative: to stop the present disastrous scheme in its tracks.