The £6million Marble Arch Mound

• ANOTHER week, another new story about the £6million Marble Arch Mound disaster.

This week MVRDV, the architects of the mound, blasted Westminster Conservatives for their failures in controlling costs, poor construction and ignoring warnings.

“As a practice, we have rarely seen such a loveless execution of our designs,” they say.

On costs the architects say that:“The cost of the whole project would be £1.25million, of which 0.8 per cent, £10,000, was set aside for the design.”

As we now know, “The Marble Arch Mound’s costs escalated to £6million, an inexplicable budget increase of almost £5million for which we never received an adequate explanation,” according to MVRDV.

There was a catalogue of construction failures, according to the architects: “The sedum on the hillside had dried out in places, appearing as though it hadn’t been watered in months. Some of it dried up during the week of intense summer heat… It was never replaced. Some planting… was not completed at all, with the sad low point being on the west side, where plastic sheeting offered a pitiful stand-in, as if we’d run out of plants…

“The elevator at the crest of the mound was unfinished and stuck out like a sore thumb above the hill. The vegetation’s irrigation system was flawed, spilling water into the street… The overall impression of it was that it had been left to rot in the middle of London’s most important shopping district…

“When we were finally able to see the project for ourselves, the deception was obvious: there had been virtually no maintenance, making the waste of money complete. In our 30 years of practice, MVRDV has never before experienced such nonchalance and laxity with our design work.”

The architects also accuse Westminster City Council of failing to manage the project effectively.

MVRDV say: “WCC commissioned FM Conway to realise the project and then barely looked at it again… Through a mixture of budget constraints and a lack of communication, many details concerning the mound’s construction were decided without our involvement… and frequent communication efforts from our side toward WCC were increasingly ignored”.

Warnings were also ignored by the council, according to MVRDV: “Warnings from our side about a possible premature opening were ignored… The Marble Arch Mound was opened while still unfinished… Visitors who paid £8 the first weekend were so insulted by the experience that they rightfully complained via social media.

“Journalists were shocked and voiced their critiques loudly. In short, Marble Arch Mound went viral, but not in a good way. The nonsensical decision to open the facility prematurely was nothing short of a disaster.”

This is a further devastating indictment of the Westminster Conservatives’ waste of public money.

A project initially designed to cost £1.25million ballooned through the council’s gross incompetence to a massive £6million.

The execution of the project was totally mismanaged, yet it was overseen by the council’s highest paid employee earning £220,000 a year.

Why did the council’s internal report fail to pick up any of MVRDV’s first-hand experience of this fiasco? Why did costs escalate so wildly?

Why was the execution of the project such an unmitigated disaster? Why were warnings about the premature opening ignored?

None of these questions will ever be answered by the Conservative incompetents at city hall.

This May Boris Johnson’s Westminster Conservatives should get what we all know they richly deserve… being booted out and replaced by a Labour council which puts people first and ends the current Conservative financial waste.

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