It may seem hard to believe but it has now been over eight years since Alex Salmond (then First Minister of the Scottish Government) announced an inquiry into the original Edinburgh Trams project after it went well over budget and took much longer than planned to just build a small section of the initially announced network. And now with there still no apparent sign of an end of the Inquiry new Labour leader of the City of Edinburgh Council, Cllr Cammy Day, is calling on the Scottish Government to intervene.
Following the recent elections Labour are now leading a new administration the Council and one of the first things that they are looking to do is put an end to the “far reaching” inquiry which continues to cost the taxpayer money as Lord Hardie sifts through over 3 million documents before giving a final report on what went wrong with the original project.
Cllr Day said: “The slow progress of this inquiry is just hugely frustrating for everybody that’s involved. It’s cost the council, and I’m sure a whole number of other bodies, an awful lot of money, including the government spending millions of pounds on this inquiry. I’ll be writing to the government to say can the government, who called for the inquiry, make something happen. I appreciate it’s an independent inquiry but there needs to be surely some timelines put on that, or else it’s a never-ending process and a never-ending cost to the public purse, and I’m sure the public want to see an end to this as much as we do.”
At this rate it remains a race to see whether trams starting running to Newhaven or we see an outcome from the Edinburgh Trams Inquiry first.
Clearly another enquiry is required as to why this enquiry has taken so long…