Star date: 31st October 2016

£1.38MILLION PUBLIC MONEY DOWN DRAIN OF SWINTON GATEWAY

Tomorrow councillors will be pouring over a report, following an internal audit investigation by Salford City Council on how the Swinton Gateway costs rose by £1.38million above original estimates and opened over a year late.

The scathing report reveals a series of cock-ups and incompetence, including that officers from Urban Vision and the Council didn't know what they were doing...but omits the role of councillors and the Mayor in keeping the scandal secret from the public and press. 

Full details here...

Back in January, Salford Council's audit team discovered major problems with the financing of the Swinton Gateway, the health and community `hub' near the Civic Centre which opened in July 2015.

It was noted that the project was fraught with spiralling costs and a delayed finish and was given a `None Assurance' rating, which is the lowest possible level of financial competence.

"Serious control issues have been identified in the systems of internal control resulting in significant risk of the system being open to error or abuse and/or significant non-compliance with controls" the audit team stated, promising a `review' and `final report' that month.

Now, six months later the report is to be discussed by Salford Council's Audit and Accounts Committee tomorrow, 1st November. And it's absolutely scathing.

In August 2013 the Gateway had an original target cost of £4.2million, with Kier Construction contracted to build the place, despite the company being targeted by anti-blacklisting campaigners at the time (see here).

The original figure rose, firstly to £4.4million and then to £5.58million, or £1.38million over target, as Kier cranked up its costs, with the Gateway opening over a year late. The original Council report, approved by former City Mayor Ian Stewart, had the financial risk down as 'low'.

The investigation highlights a series of cock-ups and blunders which show that no-one on the Gateway project from Salford City Council (SCC) and Urban Vision (UV) seemed to know what they were doing...

...Or, as the report politely puts it, "individual project officer roles were not clearly defined at the outset, either in SCC or UV, contributing to uncertainty about the roles and responsibilities of the two organisations and of individual officers..."

Meanwhile, project management on the Gateway "was not structured and therefore
lacked discipline and rigour particularly with regards to governance, financial
monitoring and reporting risk" the report states, and "a number of officers involved demonstrated a lack of awareness with regards to the financial regulations".

The report adds "The review found that the membership, role and terms of reference for the Project Board were not fit for purpose" and that "monitoring and controls for finance and project delivery issues were not effective, with insufficient identification and escalation of risks to reflect the scale of the project."

Councillors will read in the report that everything is okay now, and new procedures and stuff have been put in place to make sure that such financial incompetence doesn't happen again. But all the way through the project it was obvious there were financial problems.

As much as Council and Urban Vision officers cocked up, both the City Mayor and scrutiny councillors themselves were hardly keeping tabs or holding the project to account as more and more money was doled out, keeping the scale of the problem secret, via Part 2 publicly excluded meetings and documents.

When the Salford Star tried to expose the scandal through a Freedom of Information request, the Council withheld `final ongoing costs' as it was not in the public interest... "While the Council acknowledges the importance of accountability in public spending, it has been concluded that the Council's interests in this information being withheld from publication outweigh the public interest in the information being published", the response stated.

Even this latest investigation doesn't give the full picture, only dealing with the finances to Kier itself. There were also a variety of `other costs' which the Salford Star did manage to reveal, via the Freedom of Information response, in June last year.

From an original cost of £5million overall, the Gateway total had jumped to £6.18million, with the figure including £5million from Salford Clinical Commissioning Group, £68,000 from the Basic Need grant and £1.012million from the Council.

Salford Mayor, Ian Stewart, had also approved "additional expenditure due to the variation in cost of the programme" which, the Star understood, was not included in the FOI response, so the total cost was even higher.

Neither does the report that councillors will see tomorrow specify that Salford Council actually took on the liability for the extra delay-related costs, despite having options where the contractor, Kier, could have taken the risks...

For a full background see previous related Salford Star articles...

Swinton Gateway to Open 19 Months Late and More Than £1million Over Budget – click here

Swinton Gateway Finances Investigated as Serious Control Issues Found – click here