IN his letter to your newspaper last week, Cllr Bob Brice stated that: “Trowbridge Town Council has delivered the Civic Centre on budget…”. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The original budget was fixed at £5 million, to be financed by borrowing, with a repayment rate of £320,000 every year for 50 years giving a total repayment of £16 million. The negotiated build cost by Beard Construction of Swindon was £4.8million.
Constant questioning by the Conservative members of the Town Council in the autumn of last year led to the admission that the civic centre total cost had broken through the £5million budget but Bob Brice stated that the revised cost would be no more than £5.3million.
In a telephone call to the Council’s chief finance officer on Friday last, Cllr Graham Payne was told that the total cost of the Civic Centre project (including £240,000 retention due to be paid this December to Messrs Beards) now stands at £5.7 million. By my calculation, this represents an overspend of £700,000 or 14 per cent. Hardly a statistic to inspire confidence in the leadership of Trowbridge Town Council.
DEREK COOP Town Councillor Southwood Road Trowbridge
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