Calls for greater scrutiny over mayoral body’s ‘crown jewel’ projects

Addressing fellow members at their online meeting on Friday, Cllr Ed Murphy (Labour and Co-operative, Peterborough City Council) said: “These projects are critical to the way the public perceive the combined authority.

“How much do all these projects add up to and how much do we have in our budget to pay for them all?

“These are potentially big issues and I think we should devote more time to looking into the programme delivery in much more depth.

“It’s not that long ago that a very senior member of this authority was fired by Mayor Palmer for bringing the truth to this committee’s attention where many of these projects simply couldn’t be funded.

“At that time there was mention of a £7 million shortfall, but now we’re promising huge projects in many differing areas costing many hundreds of millions of pounds.

“If these ‘crown jewel’ projects are not scrutinised and consequently find themselves under-funded or, worse still, with cost overruns, then how will we justify what we do to members of the public?”

Cllr Murphy was referring to the revelations over escalating costs disclosed by former CPCA chief finance officer Karl Fenlon in November 2018, and who subsequently left the authority.

The committee was scrutinising an item on the agenda called ‘May [2020] Project Register’, but as chair Cllr Lorne Dupre (Lib Dem, East Cambridgeshire District Council) added: “I think we need to look at each of these projects in respect of key dates at which point we shall invite people to come in to talk with members of this committee.

“We need to have budgets, costs and potential for overruns in each project identified so that we have a clear picture of what’s going on.”

Members of the CPCA Overview and Scrutiny Committee unanimously agreed to the proposal.

Robert Alexander, Local Democracy Reporting Service