Tram watchdog asleep on job

Published on Tuesday 9 February 2010 09:07

A COUNCIL committee set up to scrutinise Edinburgh's tram project met just twice in the last year – and one of the meetings was abandoned when only one person turned up.

Despite fears over spiralling costs and slipping timetables, the Evening News can reveal the council's tram sub-committee has met only five times since it was formed.

Despite the controversy surrounding the project, it also emerged today that only five official questions have been tabled about trams since January 2008 at full council meetings.

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Official documents show that since the committee's first meeting in May 2008, it went on to meet twice more that year. Last year, it met only twice, in August and in March – when only then transport leader, Councillor Phil Wheeler, turned up and the meeting was cancelled.

Councillor Mark McInnes, the Tory transport spokesman who sits on the committee, said meetings should be called more regularly.

"My view is that there are lots of questions that need to be asked and that's only going to happen if we ensure there is transparency to the tram project. The whole idea was that councillors would be able to hear regular updates from (tram firm] TIE and the director of city development.

"It looks odd that that hasn't happened and people are going to assume they're attempting to bury bad news."

Deputy council leader Steve Cardownie said there was a strong case for the committee meeting on a regular basis, but said tram bosses would hide any bad news behind commercial confidentiality.

He said: "When that committee was set up it was envisaged that it would meet on a regular basis.

"But they managed to bury most of the bad news a long time ago by telling us it was commercially sensitive. It's been so well buried it's almost at Australia by now."

Small business leaders today accused councillors of being reluctant to "rock the boat".

Alan Rudland, chairman of the Leith Business Association said: "It does concern me that there has been so little accountability so far. All anyone seems to get back from the tram project is that things are running on time and on budget.

"Given the political divide, and the SNP's opposition to the project, it's been surprising that we've not had the sort of robust challenges you might have expected. Nobody seems to want to rock the boat."

A sub-committee of the council's main transport committee, the tram group is supposed to monitor spending, the level of financial contributions received from developers and the level of risk to the council.

It is also meant to oversee the dispute resolution process and approve changes in the design of vehicles and infrastructure, however both these tasks can be passed to the director of city development.

Cllr Gordon Mackenzie, the city's transport convener, said: "We have a variety of mechanisms in place to keep the council and general public informed of tram related issues, the tram sub-committee being only one avenue.

"At the moment we are in the midst of a complicated and confidential dispute process with one contractor and at this stage we cannot report on finances."

Make a call from a new ring road

PEOPLE in Leith Walk have been scratching their heads as to why a phone box has been left in the road, more than a metre from the kerb.

The box has been there more than six months, since the pavement was narrowed to allow more parking spaces.

Instead of moving it, workers laid the new road around the phone box. They also removed a litter bin – but replaced it next to the phone box in the road.

The box has been smashed by vandals and scrawled with graffiti, although it still works.

Mandy Haeburn-Little, TIE's director of communications, said it intended to remove the phone box, but it had not yet been practical to do so.