In THE coming weeks, the coffers of our country councils should show credits received from the Welsh Government towards their funding requirements for the new financial year that begins in April.

Every local authority up and down the nation will received at least an extra 8.4 per cent for 2022/23, money that the Government says will alleviate potential service cuts and council tax rises.

Any injection of funding to the councils, which provide the lion’s share of lifting, is certainly to be welcomed.

Ceredigion will receive an extra £9.4m for the next financial year. It will get £119,419,000 in total, which represents an increase of 8.6 per cent – only slightly above the average increase promised by Cardiff.

We need to remind the Ceredigion council members who are supposed to run the show – and Gold Command who actually does – that this money is meant for the improvement of services for the hard-pressed people of the county.

The new funding is certainly not intended to subsidise the proposed absorbent and immoral pay hikes of 17 per cent. No, instead it ought to be used on providing key services or filling the potholes of the most rural reaches of the county.

The funds should certainly ensure that when this Covid crisis is over, leisure centres and swimming pools remain open to serve local communities. For too long the centres have remained closed for repairs while the pandemic serves as an excuse.

Gwynedd Council will get a provisional extra £17.5m, rising from almost £196m this year to £213,210,000 in 2022/23.

That’s a sizeable sum – and would certainly go a long way towards funding that Llanbedr bypass.

If a third of the new funds was put aside now, and similar proportions for the following two years, the project might get done. If only...

But councillors in Gwynedd are also slated for a 17 per cent pay increase. Would they forgo that as a downpayment on the bypass? If only...

Powys is also due to receive more than £200m next year. That’s welcome news, but who would ever know given that some of those funds might trickle into the black hole of Machynlleth’s accounts. If only...