At last Thursday’s meeting to discuss the Liberal Democrat “call-in” of the £3.8 million overspend on the highway depot review, Tory and Labour councillors joined forces to defeat a proposal by Cllr Bill Hoult to refer the matter to the County Council’s Audit Committee.

The reason given was that the contract (£16 million in total) is just too small to be important enough, and that the Environment Directorate “had already learnt its lessons.”

County Councillor Bill Hoult, Liberal Democrat Leader at County Hall, explains:

“It is a shocking decision. There was an acknowledgement that there were faults. My view is that the County Council would benefit from an impartial audit of the process.”

“This is the third time this year that we have uncovered faults in project management at County, the NY Times newspaper and IT in schools being the other two.”

“£16 million is a huge amount of money, and we must ask “what have they got to hide?””