Tram auditors not told about delays

Details of delays to the Edinburgh tram project were withheld from Audit Scotland when they carried out a review before a crucial vote in the Scottish Parliament, the tram inquiry has heard.

Graeme Greenhill, senior manager at the spending watchdog, said he was not told about slippage in design work and the diversion of utilities when he carried out the review in June 2007.

The inquiry, chaired by Lord Hardie, heard that at that stage there was already some design slippage and the completion date for utility diversion works had also slipped from May/ June 2008 to November 2008.

The inquiry was shown e-mail correspondence between staff at TIE, the council’s arms length company in charge of the project, which discussed a slide presentation prepared for the auditors.

Project director Matthew Crosse said in the first e-mail that the aim of the briefing was “to summarise what is happening and convey confidence 0 Watchdog was not told of trams design ‘slippage’ that we have a plan and achieving the plan, albeit with some challenges”.

The latest developments at the inquiry came as the planned second phase extension of Edinburgh’s tram network took a major step forward, with the city council approving the business case for the proposal. A tendering process will now get under way to secure a potential contractor partner for the project, which would see the line taken from York Place, down Leith Walk and past Ocean Terminal to Newhaven. No final decision on the plans will be made until autumn 2018.