Edinburgh councillors 'misled' over trams dispute, inquiry hears

Councillors were misled'' in relation to one of the largest and most controversial projects in Edinburgh's history, a former council leader has told an inquiry.

Donald Anderson claimed elected members and council officers were deliberately denied access'' to information about the city's trams project by officials at Tie (Transport Initiatives Edinburgh), the local authority's arms-length company tasked with handling the scheme.

Mr Anderson, the Labour leader of Edinburgh City Council from 1999 to 2006, was giving evidence for a second day at the official inquiry into the capital's troubled trams project.

The probe, chaired by Lord Hardie, is examining why the trams were delivered late, over-budget and with a truncated route.

Mr Anderson told the hearing that key figures should have been given access to information about adjudications in a dispute with contractors in 2009, but were instead given interpretations'' about what was going on.

I think there was an attempt to maintain on the part of Tie an interpretation of the adjudications that was much more positive than was actually justified by the adjudication results themselves,'' he said.

So in that sense, I do firmly believe that elected members and senior officers of the council were misled.''

Mr Anderson made the comments in exchanges with Douglas Fairley QC, who is representing various individuals listed as core participants in the inquiry.

The lawyer presented several documents which he suggested challenged Mr Anderson's previous assertion that Tie had portrayed lost adjudications as being successes to senior council figures.

Mr Anderson replied: What I can tell you (is) that senior elected members and officers of the council were entitled to get access to the information they needed to make informed decisions about one of the biggest projects, and most controversial projects, in the city's history.

And they weren't given to access to that information, indeed they were denied and deliberately denied access to that information by officials on Tie.''

The leader of Edinburgh City Council between 2007 and 2012 was Liberal Democrat Jenny Dawe.

Mr Anderson said that if he had been council leader at the time of the dispute, he would have expected detailed information about adjudications to be on his desk.

The former leader also told the inquiry that utility work in preparation for the on-street tram works was not carried out efficiently and effectively''.

The fact that the utility works went wrong and that Tie, for whatever reason, did not know what utility works had been done properly on which parts of route, seriously affected the project,'' he said in a written statement submitted to the inquiry.

Addressing the hearing at the end of his evidence, Mr Anderson said that many of those connected to the trams project care about the city and wanted to do their best.

He said: I do understand the need to hold all those accountable who were involved in the tram process, myself included in that.

I would say that I know a lot of the key protagonists in this pretty well and that those are people who care passionately about Edinburgh and wanted to do their best on the part of the city.''

Lord Hardie said he would take account of all of the evidence and form his own view of the situation.