Fiasco and failure: £6million Marble Arch Mound

• THE chief executive Stuart Love’s report in to the £6million Marble Arch Mound fiasco is totally damning of the way Westminster City Council is run under the Conservatives.

Costs were allowed to increase threefold, from £2million to £6million, without any scrutiny or checks.

There was no one running the madhouse. Let’s look at some of the findings:

— “Errors in judgment, coupled with a lack of sufficient oversight”.

— “A failure of project management”.

— “Senior officers descoped and omitted critical elements”.

— “Income estimates were revised upwards with no evidence provided to support these assumptions”.

— “Despite clear and repeated warnings, overly optimistic financial updates were given”.

— “Checks and balances were circumvented to facilitate the timetable and in order to obscure the actual cost”.

— “The lack of appropriate oversight meant that costs escalated”.

— “Confusion over roles and responsibilities”.

— “Lack of commun­ication between staff and contractors”.

— “Basic lack of project co-ordination and documentation”.

The chief executive says he “has found no evidence to suggest that the problems associated with the mound have occurred or are occurring elsewhere in the council”.

This statement raises more serious questions about the role of Conservative councillors in creating the chaos that council tax-payers are now paying for.

If the Marble Arch Mound was a “one-off” fiasco, then how and why did long-serving and experienced council officers “mess-up” so spectacularly on this project and not on others?

Surely the answer to this question lies in the close involvement of the leader of the council and its cabinet members.

They demanded the mound be built and opened as quickly as possible, despite the warnings, despite the numerous project changes, and despite the inevitable cost increases.

This is the only explanation for a “one-off” failure. Sadly the chief executive’s report fails to follow up the obvious explanation for this unforgivable waste of public money.

Indeed, that is why Labour councillors called for an independent inquiry from the outset. I am confident, however, that Westminster residents will not be so blind to identifying the obvious culprits.

Next May, the Conservatives will deserve to be booted out of City Hall.

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