Should the boss of HA be sacked for wasting £1 billion?

[Palfrem]

BBC News - M25 scheme 'may have wasted £1bn'

That's a huge amount of money and waste by any measure.

 

[Stratman]

"......... may ................ could ............ should ......"

Definitely grounds for dismissal.

 

[Satch]

Another good question is why did anybody think that a 30 year PFI was the only possible way of doing this in the first place and if the spending £80m on consultants over 9 years in relation to this PFI was value for money.

Pity nobody was able to ask one of the key players because:

"We were unable to take evidence from the Agency's Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) for the project from 2005 to June 2009 as he had left the Agency to work for Parsons Brinckerhoff, a company that was then employed as an adviser on the project. This company's contract was terminated, to avoid potential conflicts of interest, in October 2009, when it was taken over by Balfour Beatty, one of the contractors to the project.

The Agency told us that as a senior civil servant the SRO had been through the Cabinet Office clearance process prior to leaving, and that one of the resulting conditions of his departure was that he would work on rail projects. The Agency told us that the former SRO was working exclusively on rail projects, but it was not clear what arrangements were in place to ensure that that was the case."

 

[Mike Walker]

Unable to comment on the basis that I currently work for a Contractor who bids for similar Projects on a regular basis.

PFI was going to be the answer to everything on a planet not far from here some time ago........

 

[Scott_F]

Senior Civil Servants are never responsible or accountable for anything. The worst that those responsible for debacles such as this will ever face is being quietly moved to another senior position in another Government agency or department.

 

[stevieb15]

I'd love it if someone could explain why it took more than a week to work out what to do next....9 years!
Pathetic is an understatement
This kind of thing illustrates very clearly that we have far too many public servants doing far too little, taking to long to do it whilst being paid too much

 

[jonnyboy]

I'd love it if someone could explain why it took more than a week to work out what to do next....9 years!
Pathetic is an understatement
This kind of thing illustrates very clearly that we have far too many public servants doing far too little, taking to long to do it whilst being paid too much

And fundamentally why it is reasonably rare that they transfer into the private sector.

 

[grober]

While its right to criticise the Highways agency for their mis-management of the project the "wasted money" had to go somewhere. It didn't vanish down a drain. As far as I can make out a large no of firms in the Private Sector benefited from this situation. While the private sector are always first to criticise civil servants this doesn't prevent them from milking any government contract for all its worth and if this involves advising a " potential employee" about "future career choices " that's OK I suppose? Its takes two to Tango as they say.

 

[st4]

Best they widenned the M25 than do away with the hard shoulder, I cant see much wrong with this given how else this country wastes money

 

[stevieb15]

Best they widenned the M25 than do away with the hard shoulder, I cant see much wrong with this given how else this country wastes money

whats wrong is it takes 9 years to make a decision, that any one of the miserable m25 commuters could have made in seconds any day of the week
in the same way m8 commuters would be able to make an equally quick decision on how to improve traffic flow
rather than mess about trying to manipulate cast iron why not just build more and wider roads

 

[fredT]

I'd love it if someone could explain why it took more than a week to work out what to do next....9 years!

easy.

when govenrment decides to spend billions on projects like these, it does take time for the ministers to figure out safe and effective ways of directing monies into avenues that will benefit themselves.

 

[stevieb15]

Very well put, but I very much doubt government ministers are much involved in the process at all, I believe this is just another example of the inefficient civil service which has blighted the performance of successive governments of which ever political persuasion.