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Councillors Helen Cameron and Jenny Johnson, speaking ahead of the meeting of the Audit Committee, outlined their concerns as to how the Birkenhead 'Movement' Scheme has more than doubled in cost, so far.
The report, by the Council's Internal Auditors, exposes multiple failings.
You can watch the meeting and see the remarks by councillors, of all parties, on the committee.
In a surprising move, Labour then abstained on whether the Committee should receive the 'action plan' into the failings of the contract management and to recognise that other, similar contracts pose a 'risk' to the Council Taxpayer.
At the start of the meeting, Councillor Ian Lewis outlined concerns that, while the report exposes serious failings on two 'active travel' schemes, there are 28 more in the pipeline. Watch that statement here.
Among the points made by Councillor Lewis, he stated that the £12m overspend on this single scheme (so far) is the symptom of a process that is not designed to accept challenge, criticism or openness, adding:
- £12m will have to be taken from other projects, in order to address the results of this failed process
- Since 2020, there have been 47 occasions when the Freedom of Information Act had to be used to obtain timely, accurate and honest information on cycle lane proposals, mostly in the Wallasey constituency.
- The responses to some those requests show how reports to councillors often have a positive spin on the proposal in question and key facts which may cause doubts over a scheme are minimised or even omitted.
- Public opposition, often by an overwhelming majority, is often downplayed while small levels of support are given parity and equal weight. This is misleading.
- Indeed, there have been more than a dozen meetings of the Active Travel Forum and the Active Travel Working Group. The issues which are outlined in the timeline in the report straddle those meetings. And yet the issues were never raised at those meetings.
- The Active Travel Working Group was set up with the specific remit of ensuring that the two relevant policy committees, economy and environment, were kept informed of progress, or otherwise, of active travel.
- The financial cost of this scheme is currently £12m more than we were promised but, in percentage terms, this is not the worst of the schemes: Harrison Drive was 143% over budget and this was only revealed, again, in response to an FoI request. No lessons were learned and no processes changed.
- Of 11 schemes ‘completed’ so far, six went over budget. A seventh, Fender Lane, is about to go massively overbudget with more being spent to try and put it right than was spent on installing it. Again, no lessons were learned and no processes changed.
