Edinburgh Trams Inquiry set to cost as much as Iraq war inquiry as it still goes on

As swift and thorough investigations go the Edinburgh Trams Inquiry has been more the latter than the former and now its been reported that the costs incurred have reached the same levels as the Iraq War Inquiry – leading to yet more headlines in the Scottish press about just how much it is costing to learn the lessons of the first phase of the construction of Edinburgh Trams. The Inquiry was first called in 2014 but some eight years later it still shows no signs of coming to an end with Lord Hardie said to be taking as long as necessary to reach his conclusions.

So far, £13.1 million has been spent on the Inquiry with a further £500,000 having been set-a-side by the Scottish Government for the financial year 2022/3. Of the money spent the vast majority has been on staffing costs (£6.1 million) with legal costs (£3 million), IT systems (£1.3 million) and office rental (£868,000) also chewing up a lot of the cost.

The Inquiry into what went wrong with the original Edinburgh Trams project, so that lessons could be learnt for future similar projects. It was first called in June 2014, with the first preliminary hearings taking place October 2015. The final evidence was heard in 2018 and since then Lord Hardie and his team have been gong through that as well as other written evidence.

There is still no sign of a final report being produced. And of course in the meantime an extension to the first tram line has been started and at this rate it will be a race to see whether the Inquiry report or tramline is ready first.

The final cost of the Iraq War Inquiry was £13 million with it taking seven years to report on its findings.