Another recent article in the Edinburgh Evening News on the subject of the controversy of the Edinburgh Trams project has seen the Council forced to confirm that they budgeted £2 million for the “external legal advice” in their defence at the Edinburgh Trams Inquiry.
The original £2 million budget was agreed by the Council in 2015 of which £1,978,871 was spent on external legal advice which included the hiring of an advocate to defend their position at the Inquiry. The figure quoted by the Edinburgh Evening News does not include any costs which may have been incurred by the council’s in-house legal team. As a result it is expected that more than £2 million will have been spent on legal costs during the Inquiry.
A Council spokesperson is quoted in the article: “An inquiry of this nature and duration inevitably requires a significant level of legal representation, and this will be the case for all participants in the Edinburgh tram Inquiry. This potential costs and related authority was, indeed, acknowledged in a report to council in the early stages of the inquiry and elected members have been kept updated since.”