Following the recommendations of an Edinburgh Schools report, Council Leader Andrew Burns today announced that CEC will set up an independently chaired inquiry into building faults at PPP1 schools across the city.
Political group leaders will discuss the inquiry’s terms of reference this week, and they will be discussed with the chair before work begins. Who that chair will be has not been confirmed, but Burns seeks someone ‘who commands respect within the construction industry’.
Councillors on the Corporate Policy and Strategy Committee discussed the preliminary report this morning (see pdf at foot of page).
Three priorities
‘When the issue came to light, our first priority was safety of pupils and staff, the second was getting pupils back into education, the third is getting the schools reopened and it is not until this has happened that the inquiry will begin,’ said Burns. In effect, that means the inquiry won’t start until after the summer holidays.
‘Naturally, we want the [inquiry’s findings] to come back as quickly as possible,’ continued Burns. ‘I would expect it to be complete in a matter of months.’
Paragraphs 3.30 and 3.31 of today’s report note that CEC has incurred significant costs as a result of the problems:
The Council is taking comprehensive legal advice in order to protect its contractual and legal position, including making appropriate deductions for the unavailability of the defective schools. This is a very complex matter which the Council is dealing with in a robust and practical manner. The Council will continue to pursue all legal and contractual avenues open to it to ensure that it makes the fullest recovery possible in relation to this matter.
For background to this story, see Breaking news, 9.4.16, 11.4.16, 12.4.16, 28.4.16 and Letters, 15.4.16.
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Fergus Smith I've read the council report at the foot of that page. Section 3.31: "As noted above the Council is taking detailed legal advice, but the Council’s position remains that it will not be left footing the bill in relation to this matter."
Call me cynical, but it seems to me that the "Council's position" is a negotiating stance, not a clear, definite legal position. It seems likely to me that if the council was unambiguously entitled to full-cost recovery, they would say so. Certainly my reading of the PPP report from 2001 - which as far as I know is the closest we're allowed to get to the actual terms of the PPP contract - suggests that this is not the case. (The PPP report archived on the ScotGov website suggests that the maximum deduction is the monthly payment, so if CEC's costs are higher than that, CEC would seemingly be left to foot the bill.)