5th June 2014. That is the date that the Scottish Government announced that there would be “swift and thorough” investigation into the major problems experienced in the construction of the original Edinburgh Trams line rom the Airport to York Place. Now six years later and the Inquiry is back in the headlines as questions continue to be asked when the result of the investigation are known with it having been one of the lengthiest and most expensive Inquiries in Scotland.
We all know that the constriction phase of Edinburgh Trams did not go according to plan. Claim and counter-claim were constant bedfellows with the contract that the City of Edinburgh Council had signed with contractors said to be a poor deal for the Council which led to the budget for what ended up as a single line – remember the original plan was a for a network of lines but the huge budget overrun meant this wasn’t possible at the time – increasing from £375 million to £776 million.
The Edinburgh Trams Inquiry – led by respected former Lord Advocate Lord Hardie – was set-up so that lessons could be learnt from just what went so badly run but the “swift and thorough” promise hasn’t been possible – well at least the swift part anyway. It has been more than two years since the last witnesses were called to the Inquiry and since then all the evidence continues to be reviewed, both from this spoken evidence and the many millions of documents provided to the Inquiry team. In total the Inquiry has so far lasted 72 months with a cost estimated at £10.72 million.
There remains no word of when the results may be known of the Inquiry and when they are it is highly likely that the verdict will be damning for those who drew these contracts up, but until these results are known that is just conjecture. There can be no doubt there were mistakes made in the original project and it can just be hoped that the current administration at the Council have learnt from these when they have set-up the contracts for the extension to Newhaven and we aren’t all sitting here in three years time discussing more problems with a major project in the Scottish capital.
Cllr Adam McVey, Leader of the Council, commented: “While we want the conclusions and we want to see if there’s anything else to be taken on board, this does just illustrate how much time and progress we would have lost if we had followed the advice of the nay-sayers. While there will be takeaways from the inquiry the current tram team have already done a brilliant job in not doing what the previous tram project did.”