Sick Kids - 'Funds talk needed as soon as possible'

We have had enough experience of major construction projects going wrong in Edinburgh to know that great caution should be exercised before we launch into the next one.

The combined mistakes made in the building of the Scottish Parliament, the deeply flawed funding of the new Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and the ongoing trams debacle would be enough to fill an excellent "How not to..." textbook for the construction industry.

So we must hope that some of the lessons learned from these blunders can help us avoid walking into another mess.

The warning bells are already ringing about the potential for disaster with the 250 million new Sick Kids hospital planned for Little France.

The big concern is how the new hospital will be paid for following the Scottish Government's U-turn over providing full capital funding.

There are growing worries about the financial burden the current plans to privately fund the project through the Scottish Futures Trust would place on NHS Lothian for many years to come.

And it is no wonder when Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon won't guarantee the Scottish Government will cover the annual payments. That leaves the health board facing the prospect of dipping into funds intended for patient care in order to meet building bills.

No-one wants to see a repeat of the farcical situation which sees NHS Lothian paying tens of millions of pounds a month to Consort, which built the ERI, for a building worth 170m and which the health board will not own at the end of the day.

The proposal from Susan Goldsmith, the health board's financial director, that some of the predicted 700m underspend on the new Forth crossing be used to pay for the new Sick Kids would be the perfect solution.

We are now too close to May 5 for any decision to be taken before the Scottish Parliament elections, but the funding of one of the most important projects for the Capital's future deserves to be thoroughly debated before then.