Councilors ‘not kept in dark’, trams inquiry is told

A senior solicitor in charge of Edinburgh council’s legal team has denied officials tried to keep politicians in the dark over the state of work on the city’s tram project.

Giving evidence at the inquiry into the project, Nick Smith – now the council’s monitoring officer and head of legal and risk – denied officials deliberately withheld information. “My understanding was that elected members were receiving information through current leader briefings to make sure everyone got information at the same time.”

Earlier this year, it emerged an e-mail sent by Mr Smith to his new boss advised councillors had been kept on a “restricted information flow”.

Mr Smith told the inquiry before Lord Hardie: “The restricted information flow was the route of the information.”