Agenda and minutes

No apologies had been received. 

No interests were declared. 

24 September 2014

The minutes of the last meeting had been circulated with the agenda.

Upon a vote it was unanimously

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting held on the 24 September 2014 be agreed and signed as an accurate record. 

These must be received no later than 12 noon on the fourth working day before the date of the meeting and must relate to the specific matter for which this meeting has been convened

2 public questions were received. 

Report of the Chief Executive

The Chairman explained that the discovery of the additional overspend at this late stage and the fact that, whilst Grant Thornton’s (GT) report tracked the chronological order of various correspondence, it did not identify any key reasons for the failure, which he would expect from a report, both necessitated the need for further investigation.  He was disappointed that the report was not available, as he was sure that other members would be, but he had felt that it was important that the committee met to understand the current situation and the reasons for it. 

The Chief Executive introduced the report as circulated with the agenda and apologised that this was not the report that he had expected he would be presenting, the report for which the meeting had been convened.  He explained that a report had been commissioned from forensic auditors at GT, to review the extension project at the Wilson Art Gallery and Museum (AG&M) after the project exceeded the previously agreed budgetary provision by £360,000 and was completed 12 months later than originally planned.  This audit process took much longer than anticipated, however, on Friday 28 November 2014, just as the report was being finalised, it became apparent that the true extent of the overspend exceeded that which had been agreed in February 2014.  Neither, the Chief Executive or any other senior officers had been aware of this additional overspend prior to this point.  It had been identified at this time, as there was the matter of the contractor being paid the retention, but this was not what the overspend related to.  The overspend had been incurred as a result of a number of extras which had been commissioned by the AG&M, but not logged on the council’s financial system.  Whilst the report to Council on 14 February 2014 had been prepared in good faith, this was incorrect and at this stage, Finance had a high degree of confidence that the additional overspend was of the order of £90,000.

He provided members with a brief history to the issue.  Key individuals on the project had included, the Senior User, a senior officer at the Wilson, responsible for certain contractual matters, the Project Sponsor, the Director of Service, and the Executive Sponsor, an Executive Director who had since retired.  The cost for the project was originally estimated to be £6.3million; a figure which Council agreed to underwrite, the authorised sum.  At the end of the tendering process, ISG, who had submitted a tender for considerably less than the expected cost, were awarded the contract and the contract budget was revised to £5.6million.  This was good news but from the outset this was considered to be a difficult build and the authorised sum was not reduced at this stage.  At an early stage the projects structural engineer went into liquidation and upon appointment of a new structural engineer, a lot of work had to be repeated.  A mistake during the pouring of concrete resulted in this having to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

There were no urgent items for discussion.

14 January 2015

The next meeting was scheduled for 14 January 2015.  It was likely that another extraordinary meeting would be arranged in the weeks after this meeting.  Democratic Services would contact members in due course.