Edinburgh City Council is still dealing with an ongoing legal claim almost a decade after its troubled tram system opened, it has emerged.
The Scottish local authority included £4.5 million to “resolve outstanding disputes” in a table of estimated costs to the public estate for the project.
A public inquiry in September published a critical report into the £300m over-budget construction of the first phase of the tram network three years behind schedule.
Now a report to councilors has detailed the local authority’s response and set out more details of how the costs of the scheme have escalated.
Building the tram system was priced at £852.6m in the latest council document, up from an initial budget of £545m.
The updated cost includes £4.5m for outstanding disputes, and the report says it relates to two separate claims, one of which had been detailed to councilors privately and paid.
“The second is still to be resolved, but members will be informed before any payment is made,” the document said.
Other additional costs include staff and pension payments, as well as funds granted to line companies.
The report added that including the £207.3m budget for the second phase of the project, which links York Place to Newhaven, brought the final cost to over £1bn.
In September, the chairman of the public inquiry, Lord Hardie, cited “mismanagement and abdication of responsibility on a large scale” as he picked up the debris from the error-strewn project.
The independent operating company TIE, charged with negotiating the design and construction contracts for the construction of the tram, came under special scrutiny. Hardie said he had “no knowledge or experience in dealing with the particular difficulties associated with building a tram or light rail system in the center of a UK city”.
The investigation found that when TIE signed a contract with Bilfinger Berger and Siemens, trading as Infraco, to carry out construction and engineering work on the tram project, utilities still had to be cleared and the work of design was incomplete.
Evidence gathered by the inquiry included a 2010 memo from a senior council lawyer to its head of legal services, headed “Tram briefing”, which warned that “dissemination of the real story here could cause serious problems” and said to keep “politicians”. on “restricted information flow” was “critical”.
The council said in its response to Hardie’s report that an investigation had been carried out to consider the actions of employees still working for the local authority. “Following the completion of the investigation process, recommendations were considered by the chief executive, who was satisfied that the process had been carried out in a robust manner and concluded that no further action was necessary,” it added.
The report and its recommendations will be considered by Edinburgh Council’s Governance Risk and Best Value Committee, the Transport and Environment Committee and the full Council. The board is expected to accept most of the suggestions made by Hardie.
