The file ignored by Audit Scotland, parliament and politicians [5]

2013’s NOTIFICATION OF A TWO-YEAR DELAY

The project had been beset by problems and issues from the very outset thanks to a combination of undeveloped technology and the absence of the £23 million to pay for it.

Among a collection of 80 reports, emails and other correspondence which SBC released in August 2017 on the SIC’s orders were details of yet another delay of two years of which notice was given by NES in late 2013. The NEAT trials in Canford were going extremely badly, and after a catalogue of excuses the contractors finally admitted there was no prospect of commissioning the Borders plant until July 2017 although even that date could prove to be ‘ambitious’.

Here’s how the council’s own consultants reacted to the news – although the council seemed content to allow matters to drift on.

SLR Consulting (technical experts) wrote: “In summary it is difficult for SLR to understand whether there is a reticence to try to develop because; data attained does not show the process favourably; if operational issues at Avonmouth are taking priority or are showing some fundamental issues with the technology; if the technical team are capable of addressing and managing the problems to an expedient solution.”

And financial advisers Nevin Associates were more forthright in their correspondence with SBC following the latest test failure at Canford: “This may have been the final incident that convinced NES to come clean and admit that there was no chance of implementing NEAT on a commercial scale in 2014.

“This could leave us hanging on the outcome of the Canford trials, over which we have no control, and if those were to fail or (more likely) take longer than anticipated to succeed, then we would still potentially be exposed to the risk of having no treatment solution in place for the Council’s residual waste.

“It is imperative that momentum is not lost and that NES show evidence of continued commitment to the project, otherwise we may have little option but to pursue a Plan B to avoid the risk that the Council fails to achieve ZWP regulatory requirements.”

NES had already been granted a so-called ‘contract moratorium’ giving them extra time to solve the various problems dogging Project Easter Langlee.

Surely council members should have stepped in and ordered an end to the fiasco in December 2013. That would have avoided a 15 month period up to February 2015 when tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds of public money continued to be squandered without any progress being made. But yet again councillors appear to have been conspicuous by their absence.

CONCLUSION – Those who take the trouble to read this report are free to draw their own conclusions.

In my opinion Scottish Borders Council - at the very least - was grossly incompetent in its stewardship of substantial sums of public money. SBC was equally inept in the management and administration of a £23 million building contract, work on which had not even started after almost four years of dithering and interminable delays caused by a model of technology which had never been commercially proven, and by an inability to secure funding for construction.

The fact that no-one will be held to account for the entire debacle is regrettable and disgraceful.

That concludes our "serialisation" of the comprehensive document which our regulatory bodies and public representatives chose to ignore and refused to act upon. WHY? As we said at the outset your comments will be welcomed.