Yesterday reported about claims of a £4.8m error in the remodelling of County Hall scheme which had been raised at the last full council meeting on 16th March.
Prior to publishing the article, we got in touch with Cllr Tim Hunter Henderson on Monday asking for his comments on the allegations, but as yet, have still not received a reply.
We also got in touch with Cllr Welsford (pictured), who spotted the error, and asked for his comments on the situation.
He gave VB this response.
Having raised this matter before full council on the 16th March, I am still to receive a full response to my concerns which I reiterated to Cllr Pugh the next morning by email. There are a number of things that worry me about this situation. After the Highways PFI, Transformation is probably the biggest project in progress at this time. I would have expected the lead member for major projects to know what the business case is based on, without having to refer to officers. The level of borrowing and the attendant interest is a crucial variable and impacts directly on the level of savings that are possible for the project.
The mistake that seems to have been made is elementary. I cannot understand how it went un-noticed by the lead member and when challenged he was not willing to take personal responsibility for it, seeking instead to share the possible blame with a range of colleagues and senior officers. Cllr Whittle’s question, which followed up mine, was very pertinent when he asked, “so none of you noticed it was wrong?”.
What is most worrying is the apparently cavalier attitude towards the error. It is as if the figures don’t much matter.
So-what if the cash flow is almost £200k per annum out! What’s 4.8m between friends? The project still saves money – just not so much as we said! Can’t understand what all the fuss is about!
We pay good money to recruit the best officers and we pay our cabinet members a significant enhancement to their allowances to ensure that we get things like this right.
We need to have confidence that if they tell us that we are going to save a specific sum by taking a particular decision, those figures will be as accurate as possible.
So far, Cllr Hunter Henderson seems to be saying that the actual level of borrowing is variable and therefore these figures will change depending on capital receipts. I think that is understandable. But it does not explain why this error was made or more importantly why it was not picked up by him as the lead for the project, Cllr Pugh the Leader of the Council, Dave Burbage the Finance Director or Steve Beynon the Chief Executive, all of whom are, according to Cllr Hunter-Henderson, responsible for scrutinising these things and ensuring the project is running to plan. It’s almost three weeks and I still have no answers.
Image: © Barbara Gibbons-Roscoe
