Edinburgh tram pay-offs ‘unacceptable’ admits Lesley Hinds

EDINBURGH’s new transport leader has admitted it was a mistake for senior officials who worked on the city’s troubled tram project to have been given huge pay-offs.

Lesley Hinds conceded it was “unacceptable” for the payments, worth more than £700,000, to have been made when the project had run into so much trouble. However, she has described as “naive” SNP demands for the officials to hand back the compensation pay-offs, pointing out that the Nationalists had been in coalition in the city at the time they were agreed.

MSP Jim Eadie said the people of Edinburgh would be “aghast” that officials would walk away with “golden goodbyes” after the disruption and delay that the project had caused.

The seven top directors of Tie, the firm set up by the city council to run the scheme, received just over £400,000 in compensation after losing their jobs. Most controversy surrounded the secrecy over how much Tie’s chief executive Richard Jeffrey received, with the final tally coming to almost £200,000 despite the fact he only worked on the project, which is five years late and seen it budget double, for nine weeks in 2011-12.

The decision to publish the compensation details is thought to have been taken before May’s council elections, in which he Lib Dems were ousted from power in the City Chambers.

The officials were also paid huge sums for notice periods which they were not required to work, amounting to an estimated £300,000. The figures emerged in the council’s annual report of what senior staff at its companies have been paid.

Mr Eadie said: “It is totally unacceptable that individuals associated with a discredited Trams project should be remunerated in this way. The very least that should happen now is for the individuals concerned to forego these generous payments – there must be no reward for failure.”

Cllr Hinds said: “It is naive for the SNP to say that when these payments have already been made. These figures have not been made public before and we think it is right that they are now. I think it was unacceptable they were made in the first place.”

Taxpayers have been left with a £2.3 million bill for the winding-up of Tie, which was confirmed last August following its disastrous handling of a long dispute with contractors.

TIE PAY-OFFS

Richard Jeffrey, chief executive of tram firm Tie, received £193,402 in the last financial year, despite announcing he was quitting in May. This includes £82,825 in compensation and a further £105,577. The council and Tie had previously blocked repeated attempts to find out his pay-off.

Frank McFadden, who was in charge of key infrastructure work on the project, ended up with £203,301, including £49,857 in compensation.

Tie’s commercial director Dennis Murray, who worked for eight months last year, was paid a total of £154,118, including £39,893 in compensation.

Tie’s programme director Susan Clark was given £66,864 in compensation, on top of £79,638 from her salary, for seven months’ work.

Alastair Richards, Tie’s managing director, received the second highest package, with £186,706 of his salary and further compensation of £49,130.

Project director Steven Bell (pictured above) was paid £283,891 last year, including £87,211 in compensation. He left Tie in October last year.