Costs continuing to soar on multi-millionpound junction works

Spending linked to the £35 million A9/A85 junction project has soared by more than £2 million due to payments to land owners.

Perth and Kinross Council’s head of finance Stewart Mackenzie told a recent committee session he needed to move money between budgets to cover additional “compensation events” that had occurred during the project.

Eyebrows were raised when it emerged that the £2.3m taken from the council’s structural maintenance budget to pay for “compensation events” was 23% of the fund’s annual total.

Labour councillor Alasdair Bailey raised questions around the costs.

He said: “It was with much fanfare and partially at the expense of projects such as PH2O and Pitlochry schools that the administration allocated £10m over 10 years for roads structural maintenance in their capital budget earlier this year.

“I was therefore surprised that they so willingly dipped into that pot and allocated almost a quarter of one year’s budget (£2.3m) to cover this overspend at the A9/A85 works.”

A strategic policy and resources committee report said work on the junction improvements, plus a link road to Bertha Park, was going well but costs had risen.

It said: “A project of this scale and complexity would normally be subject to a number of compensation events. These are a result of issues such as unforeseen ground conditions, work variations and design issues.

“In June the council approved additional funding of £3 million to address these compensation events, based upon the estimates available at the time, while acknowledging the potential for further costs as works progress.

“The latest projected outturn has been updated to reflect further compensation events agreed with the main contractor since June.

“Now that the public utility works have been completed on site, a review of the original cost estimates has been undertaken resulting in these being higher than anticipated.”