Bins dispute cost fears after cold snap busts city budget

Published on Saturday 23 January 2010 10:22

THE bill for battling the big freeze in Edinburgh is set to spiral to £3.5 million, it emerged today.

The city council has revealed it expects to bust its winter maintenance budget by up to 2.1 million as a result of the bad weather.

And up to100,000 of that has been spent on bringing in private firms to clear the roads.

The council's director of finance Donald McGougan provided the figures after being quizzed by councillors.

However, the council was not willing to detail how many days of work the teams did – although it is thought to have only been a few days from 7 January.

Opposition politicians say that the amount it cost to bring in private firms for a few days to clear roads "sends alarm bells ringing" about the cost of the bin dispute, which has led to private contractors working for several months in the city.

In the meeting, Mr McGougan said: "On 9 January, we said that our winter maintenance budget of 1.4m was totally spent. There are now potential extra costs between then and the end of the financial year in dealing with potential bad weather that is still to come.

"The anticipated overspend in the overall services for communities position in relation to this is in the range of 1.3m-2.1m."

He refused to be drawn on the cost of the private firms brought in during the bin dispute, but insisted that the costs were "containable" within the overall services for communities budget.

When asked how much of the 1.4m roads budget was spent on bringing in private contractors, Mr McGougan said: "It was a modest amount, less than 100,000."

It is the first indication of the level of money that is being spent on private firms.

Councillor Andrew Burns, leader of the Labour group on the council, said: "It is interesting that that sort of figure was spent on private contractors for only a couple of days when they helped in Currie, Balerno and some of the higher up areas.

"Despite getting these figures, we are still getting nothing about the cost of the private contractors brought in to help during the refuse dispute after nearly seven months. I am convinced and concerned that the cost of the dispute will now be in the millions of pounds."

"The sort of figures mentioned today rings serious alarm bells about the cost of the dispute. But again we have had Councillor Phil Wheeler saying they won't release figures until the end of the dispute, which is very disappointing. I have serious concerns that the figure will be hidden within budgets."

Mark Turley, director of the council's services for communities department, said: "The cost of additional measures to deal with the severe weather will be covered either by the projected underspend or by using council reserves. This will not be decided until the end of the current financial year."