A GLOBAL energy boss who is involved in the £1.3 billion city deal for the Swansea Bay City Region has asked the UK and Welsh Governments to hand over their contributions three times as quickly as has been agreed.

Ed Tomp, the general manager of Valero UK, said he asked representatives from both Governments if they could pay their £241 million city deal share over five rather than 15 years.

Mr Tomp, who is chairman of the city deal’s economic strategy board, said: “They were sympathetic, but not very sympathetic.”

He said he felt the 15-year spread of £241 million created risk for the 11 public-private projects which have been agreed for Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire.

Mr Tomp said the Government representatives were worried about setting a precedent if the funding period was changed.

Addressing colleagues at a meeting of the city deal’s ruling joint committee, Mr Tomp said the five-year funding proposal was one of four recommendations the economic strategy board had come up with.

The other recommendations called on the two Governments to release funding for the first two city deal projects immediately “to restore confidence” among all stakeholders; to arrange workshops for project teams to better understand the process of developing business cases to the required level; and to allow project teams to alter or even replace projects.

Mr Tomp said the first two of these recommendations were “positively received” by the Government representatives, and that they were “quite open” to the one about project flexibility.

He added: “I thought they were generally receptive and generally supportive.”

The proposals were the result of meetings or conversations with the four councils and some other public sector partners, and align with recommendations from separate reviews of the city deal, which critics argue has made little tangible progress more than two years after its heads of terms were signed by Theresa May and former First Minister Carwyn Jones.

City deal funding will also come from the private sector (£637 million) and the regional public sector (£396 million), although one of the councils – Neath Port Talbot – is reviewing its three projects.

Joint committee chairman Rob Stewart said he also favoured accelerated funding from Government.

“I think that discussion is not done yet,” he said.