Council sent worst staff to tram project
Bungling workers dumped on failing scheme ‘to get rid of them’
INCOMPETENT council employees were off-loaded onto Edinburgh’s tram project to get rid of ‘substandard performers’, the inquiry into the botched scheme heard yesterday.
The claim, made by transport boss Neil Renilson, emerged in a day of remarkable evidence about management of the £1billion project, which arrived hugely over budget and three years late in 2014.
As chief executive of the company Transport Edinburgh Ltd (TEL), he was tasked with outlining the requirements for the project. In a written statement, parts of which were read out at the Edinburgh Tram Inquiry yesterday, Mr Renilson said a senior politician was ‘quite annoyed’ about the City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) recruitment process.
Mr Renilson said he was told: ‘It was reminiscent of when President Clinton said any Cuban was welcome in the US, and Castro emptied his jails and asylums onto boats and sent them to Florida.’
The former TEL boss went on: ‘There were staff who were transferred from CEC. Some of these were perfectly good people. However, the transfer process was also seen as an opportunity by some in CEC to rid themselves of certain employees deemed sub-standard performers.’
Others had ‘lacklustre career histories’ and were only taken on because they were available immediately and Transport Initiatives Edinburgh (TIE) – the councilowned firm running the project – needed to ‘staff up very quickly’.
His submission also cast blame on some senior individuals.
Mr Renilson, who quit in 2008, said that TIE chief executive Willie Gallagher ‘appeared not to have the drive, breadth of knowledge, charisma or gravitas necessary’ or the ‘back teeth’ needed for the job.
He also claimed TIE project director Ian Kendall was given a scathing review by Sir Peter Hendy, the then Commissioner for Transport in London. Mr Renilson alleged that Sir Peter had spent four years trying to ‘get rid’ of Mr Kendall when he was working on the Croydon trams project.
Despite their alleged shortcomings he said: ‘Some of the TIE people had a certain arrogance and an unshakeable faith in their own abilities.
‘They genuinely believed that they knew what they were doing and could deliver the project on time and on budget, and when it became blindingly obvious that things had gone badly wrong, they started the search for the guilty, followed by the punishment of the innocent.’
And he claimed TIE’s relationship with the council was reminiscent of TV sitcom Yes Minister.
Mr Renilson’s statement said: ‘TIE told the councillors what they wanted to hear, which reminded him of a sketch where Hacker says: “I don’t want the truth, I want something I can tell Parliament”.’
He explained: ‘Replace parliament with the councillors and you get the picture.’
In bizarre testimony, Mr Renilson compared himself to Oskar Schindler, the man who saved 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust.
In spoken evidence he said: ‘I allowed myself to sleep at night by adopting the Schindler strategy. I didn’t wish to be excluded, I thought I could do a lot more good by staying there and mitigating the effects as best I could.’
After the lunch break the witness did not reappear.
Inquiry chairman Lord Hardie said: ‘I’m satisfied that Mr Renilson is no longer fit to give evidence today so we will adjourn his evidence to a date to be afterwards fixed.’
‘They had a certain arrogance’