The £6million Marble Arch Mound

• AT last, the £6million Marble Arch Mound is coming down!

The mound will not be completely gone for months, but this is a good time to reflect on the Conservatives’ 10 key failures:

— It cost a staggering £6million – triple the £2million set aside for the project.

— The city council’s deputy leader resigned following the massive budget overspend.

— Reviews for the 82ft mound of scaffolding were so bad that the council was forced to scrap the £8 entrance fee out of embarrassment.

— The mound was branded the “London’s worst tourist attraction” and a “waste of money” following six months of mockery and ridicule, making Westminster an “international laughing-stock”.

— Much of the view into neighbouring Hyde Park was obstructed by trees.

— The Westminster Council official in charge of the mound fiasco was paid more than the authority’s chief executive with a £220,000 salary, making him the authority’s highest-paid employee.

— Marble Arch Mound was visited 250,000 times, less than half a day’s footfall on Oxford Street and therefore making a miniscule contribution to the local economy.

— It cost the city council £150,000 a month to keep the mound open after it refused to listen to the Labour Party’s calls to “put the mound out of its misery” and pull it down.

— In October 2021 a council internal investigation of the mound project described the soaring costs of the scheme as “devastating” and “avoidable”.

— The report by the council’s chief executive said there were “clear and repeated warnings” about the project being over budget.

The Marble Arch Mound is due to be finally demolished in late April.

A fitting memorial for this spectacular Conservative financial disaster would be for Boris Johnson’s party to lose control of Westminster City Council in May – and be replaced by a Labour council pledged to put residents’ services first and stop the current financial waste.

CLLR PAUL DIMOLDENBERG
Labour City Management Spokesperson
City Hall, Victoria Street, SW1