Planned Gibraltar-sized rail testing centre has cost taxpayers £70m but hasn't been built

The future of a proposed rail-testing centre that has received £70m of taxpayers' money but still has not been built is to be decided by the Welsh government.

The Global Centre of Rail Excellence (GCRE) has not found the private-sector funding it needs as the risk is "too great" for potential investors, its boss has said.

Launched five years ago, the project is based at the former Nant Helen opencast coal mine near Ystradgynlais, Powys.

Ministers are now being asked to approve plans for a data centre there, which GCRE hopes will attract more funding for the rail project.

The Welsh government said GCRE – which it owns – has been "exploring a range of projects to revitalise" the site.

"We are working with the company to assess next steps, in light of our productivity mission," a spokesperson added.

The Welsh government has given GCRE £50m since it was set up by Labour in 2021.

The former Conservative UK government also provided £20m.

GCRE hoped to find £330m from private backers to transform the mine near Bannau Brycheiniog national park - also known as the Brecon Beacons.

Two 4.3 mile (7km) electrified tracks for testing trains would loop around a site roughly the size of Gibraltar.

With other facilities, GCRE said it could create more than 1,000 jobs.

It was supposed to be up and running in 2025, but has been delayed until 2030.

The scheme was inherited by Plaid Cymru when it won the Senedd election in May.

GCRE chief executive Simon Jones said there was demand in the rail industry for the services the company would provide "but we can't carry on using public money on this forever so a decision needs to be made".

Jones added that there had been "detailed conversations" with an energy and data centre company, but said he could not name it due to commercial confidentiality.

GCRE wants to complete those talks this year so a contract can be signed.

"And we need to be in a position where we know whether the railway is going ahead or not at the moment we sign that contract," he told BBC Politics Wales.

"If the government decides this is something that it wants to do, if we are able to execute the contract with the data centre partner, then five years from now we could be in a situation where we see trains running around this site."

GCRE has spoken to potential investors around the world, but failed to secure funding.

"I can list off a whole load of what would sound like excuses about macro-economic conditions, the long tail of Covid, etcetera, but essentially it comes down to risk appetite from the investment market," Jones said.

"This is an unknown proposition that we have got here. There is risk around being able to create the UK's first purpose-built high speed rail testing facility, and that risk is too great for the market to take on its own in current circumstances."

Welsh Conservative Member of the Senedd Andrew RT Davies, who visited the site as chairman of the last Senedd's economy committee, said: "The government needs to get its act together, make a quick decision.

"Is it going to continue to back this site for regeneration purposes or is it going to re-purpose it for other reasons?"