Anger over potential project failure

Why were Powys councillors kept in the dark over the potential failure of a project to restore Montgomery canal, a member has asked.

At a meeting of Powys County Council’s Governance and Audit committee on Friday, September 27 members received an audit report on the project by SWAP.

SWAP are the council’s internal auditors for the council and have said that it is a “medium” risk that the project will not be delivered.

This is because the funding needs to be spent by March 31, 2025, and any leftover could be clawed back by the UK Government.

As it stood at the end of last March (2024) the project has spent £2.431 million and had received £8.319 million of the total funding of £13.937 million

Powys Independent group Cllr Graham Breeze said:  “What has really concerned me is that the first I heard of a delay and possible loss of the funding is when I read it in the newspapers.

“That really annoys me.

“If we didn’t have this report in front of us today would any of us have known or when would we have known, and I’m alarmed by that.”

Cllr Breeze said that as one of the councillors for Welshpool he had been at the centre of the project: “from day one.”

Cllr Breeze said: “I’m very supportive of it, the reputational damage this would cause if we fail to deliver this project is absolutely enormous and totally indefensible.”

He asked cabinet member for economic development and regeneration Cllr David Selby why this hadn’t been brought to all councllors attention sooner, so it could be “discussed openly” before auditors had: “picked it up.”

Liberal Democrat Cllr Selby said: “The process for the project is the same as anything else in the council, the appropriate reporting is done at the appropriate time.

“We could not discuss an audit report until receiving it either.”

He explained that the general election and change of government had: “caused us great problems.”

Cllr Selby said: “I’m confident that we know the way out of this and so long as the PAR (project adjustment request) process can speedily be resolved at a (UK) government level then we are ready to get on.

“You will know there are contractors on site in Welshpool working on elements of the project now as we speak.

“Nearer Newtown work is being conducted on the aqueduct.

“It’s not like nothing is happening, there’s a lot of work going on.”

Cllr Breeze said: “I don’t accept that you could not come to council with concerns that you could share that this project is at risk.”

Programme delivery manager Louise Nicholson explained that there are a number of bureaucratic layers of management to the project before getting to the political level.

She explained that in July 2022, Cabinet had approved delegating the day to day running to a project board so long as it kept to the approved funding.

Anything more that would have to go to cabinet for a political decision.

Ms Nicholson said: “We have our project board but also our programme delivery supporting communities board which we reported to on this.

“That then goes up transformation delivery board and on to CLT (corporate leadership team) and cabinet.

“There are reports giving updates on this project going through the system and those should have been shared throughout.”

Before the application for an extension goes to Westminster, Ms Nicholson said it needs to be approved by Cabinet.

Once the Liberal Democrat/Labour cabinet sign off the “project adjustment request” it will be submitted to the UK Government in November.

If this extension is agreed, the project could have an extra nine months more to spend the available funding in a bid to finish off the project.