Conservatives win backing for closer monitoring of council


capital projects!

Bristol Conservative Councillors have won a commitment by the City Council to significantly improve its project management arrangements in the wake of a £6 million overspend on the Redland Green Secondary School.

At last weeks Budget-fixing meeting, Conservative Deputy Leader Geoff Gollop secured all-party support for his amendment to the Council's Capital Budget which will put in place a raft of new measures designed to prevent a repetition of the mistakes made in the building of the flagship project.

In addition to accepting the recommendations of the Council Auditor Grant Thornton, all large/high risk projects will now have an Executive Member sponsor appointed, who will have full responsibility for the overview of the scheme from conception to completion.

One major reform or safeguard requires reasons to be explicitly stated, justified and recorded for any decision to depart from the Council's own procurement regulations.

Project Governance Boards, partly composed of specially trained Members, will now be put in place for high risk capital projects - in contrast to the process followed over Redland Green School - where plans for such a body were ditched before construction even began.

Cllr Gollop (Con, Westbury on Trym) said: “The issues and failings exposed by the Redland Green financial debacle are significant and alarming.

“Over the years, many Councillors have frequently aired their concerns over the ability of the Authority to handle competently its large-scale capital programmes.

“It is quite staggering that the financial control mechanisms and procedures, such as risk assessments or controls on potential overspends, already established to prevent the kind of financial catastrophe we now face, were not complied with or just ignored.

“I find it incredible that it is almost impossible to identify those responsible for this disastrous decision.

“By incorporating the main recommendations of the Auditor and Resources Scrutiny Commission, it is my hope that we can establish clear lines of accountability and greater transparency in the project management process.

“Our corporate procurement regulations and systems of overview must be made much more robust.

“The way this project was handled is disturbing in the extreme. We must ensure that this completely inept mishandling of an important capital project is never allowed to happen again.”

Back to Local News Index 29 February 2008