Minister forced to defend SNH relocation decision

Published on Wednesday 10 January 2007 01:17

ROSS Finnie yesterday defended a controversial decision to overrule his senior civil servant and order a major quango to move out of Edinburgh at a cost to the taxpayer of more than £20 million.

The environment minister told Holyrood's audit committee he had ruled Scottish Natural Heritage should go to Inverness because the Executive was committed to a policy of moving civil-service jobs away from the capital.

In a highly unusual move, Mr Finnie was called in front of the committee because he had made the relocation decision in 2003 against the recommendation of his most senior civil servant.

John Graham, the head of the department at the time, told ministers that, as the "accountable officer" - with legal responsibility for the stewardship of taxpayers' money - he could not approve the plan.

However, Mr Finnie told the committee, which is investigating whether the move was a proper use of public funds, that Mr Graham came to that decision because of the "narrow ground" that defined relocation moves at the time.

Mr Finnie said he had had to balance the advice from Mr Graham against the Executive's policy.

The move to Inverness was ordered despite the Highland city being ranked fifth on a shortlist of five possible locations, and strong opposition to the move from staff, unions, Edinburgh politicians and the SNH board.

Only 55 staff out of the 270 working at SNH headquarters in Edinburgh decided to make the move to Inverness, leading to redundancy costs of 6.9 million. The cost of recruiting new staff reached nearly 1 million.