Dundee City Council’s chief executive has said a £4.4 million bill to fix a major blunder on hundreds of homes could rise.
Greg Colgan said the figure is now a “best estimate” because of the possible impact of inflation on the funds allocated a year ago and that “cost variance” would be reported.
His comments came at an online meeting of the council’s scrutiny committee on Wednesday.
Councillors sought further answers on how failure to follow revised British safety standards on roofing landed the city the huge repair bill.
Auditors Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) published a report last week on decision-making within the local authority that led to the blunder and multimillion pound costs.
A total of 262 owners and 894 tenants were affected when it was decided to install new roofs on 450 Dundee homes after issues were first flagged in 2019.
Councillors met to question council officers and a PWC risk director about its implications.
The report’s main findings were that “apparent lack of knowledge” combined with staff failing to ask “obvious questions” caused the safety standards failure.
Councillors also expressed concerns about a chain of errors that caused the costs, including an absence of external accreditation on quality assurance standards.
‘No quality assurance’
Scottish Labour councillor for Strathmartine, Kevin Keenan said: “Out of five parts of council involved in this, there’s only one with quality assurance. The rest of them didn’t have it.
“I can understand corporate finance not having it because they are audited.
“But I can’t understand why we haven’t a quality assurance system in place for construction.”
Greg Colgan replied: “There is a quality management system (for construction) that is being reviewed and in place. It was last reviewed in 2016.
“We are continuing to looking into whether that becomes externally accredited.”
‘Future risk minimised?’
SNP councillor for North East, Willie Sawers praised the auditor’s report and its 25 recommendations for change within council decision-making.
He asked Stuart Brown, risk director from the auditor: “How confident are you if all these recommendations are put into practice that the risk is minimised to the lowest level possible?”
Mr Brown said: “The likelihood of this or something similar happening again would be quite low.
I mean you can never say never as it requires manual control of knowledge that staff have…but you would hope that it wouldn’t happen again.”
‘Substantial and concerning failure’
Liberal Democrat councillor for the West End, Fraser Macpherson said: “It would appear that those undertaking the clerk of the works role were not aware of change in British standards.
“I would have that it would be common practice that changes in regulation are properly rolled out amongst key staff. That was a substantial and concerning failure.”
He asked Mr Brown: “Are changes not being rolled out in an organisation something that happens regularly? How unique is this situation? It’s cost the taxpayer a heck of a lot of money”
Mr Brown answered: “Have I seen an issue of this exact nature elsewhere? No. Could I see it happening elsewhere? Yes, potentially.
“The key is how do you make (sure) your teams…are sighted on changes? And if one team isn’t aware at least one other team would be so they could flag it at the right point.”
‘No wonder blunders happened’
Following the meeting, Mr Keenan commented: “What is unforgivable, is that someone at Dundee contract services has let the quality assurance accreditation standard that they had drop.
“In relation to the roofs – no wonder the blunders happened.”
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