Delays to more than £6m in investment projects across Southampton
Repairs to leisure centres and schools are among the projects being pushed back
Millions of pounds of investment in the current year’s budget for projects in Southampton are already being pushed back to the next financial year.
School and art gallery roof works, street lighting improvements and a leisure centre refurbishment are some of the schemes facing setbacks.
A report to the city council’s cabinet said there was a £6.24million slippage across capital programmes due to take place in 2024/25.
The revised programme for the current year involves £171.82million of investment across the general fund and housing revenue account, although there is a forecast underspend of £1million.
This is due to a surplus on implementing the council’s new CareDirector software and no need for the contingency budget in the completed Belgrave Industrial Estate roof work.
The report detailed the major slippage that came to light in recent months.
Mount Pleasant Junior School’s £500,000 roof works will now be carried out in the 2025 summer holidays having been scheduled to begin in the winter months. The change is due to weather and safety conditions.
A £250,000 roof project at Compass School has been unable to progress as the council has not been able to agree access for 2024. Discussions are ongoing over establishing an access window in 2025.
Further assessments need to be made about Foundry Lane Primary School’s roof works, with £200,000 allocated. An update is expected next month.
Around £310,000 of highways improvement works will be pushed back to 2025/26 as they are dependent on other projects, which will not be completed until later this year.
A widespread investment of in upgrading street lighting has faced “significant delays”. The report said this is due to complex contract negotiations with the service provider. This has now been resolved, with 50 per cent of the budget (£1.42million) pushed to 2025/26 as the work will take place over two years.
The final phase of the Southampton City Art Gallery roof project was delayed due to an “unexpected requirement” for additional insurance. The work is now underway and will take two years, so £1.68million of the budget has moved to next year.
Feasibility work on the transformation of St Mary’s Leisure Centre is expected to be completed by the end of this summer, with design works over winter. This new timeline means the works, budgeted at £1.85millon, will now take place in 2025.
Cabinet members will be asked to approve the £6.24million of slippage within the general fund programme.
Last month, opposition councillors questioned the Labour council leadership over the amount of slippage in the capital programme.
More than £17million of works did not take place as originally planned in 2023/24.
Conservative group deputy leader Cllr Jeremy Moulton said: “We often do just talk about ‘it’s just slippage’ but we should be targeting delivering as much of the capital programme in year as possible.”
Liberal Democrats councillor Sam Chapman said some projects had slipped multiple years.
Labour deputy leader and cabinet member for finance and corporate services Cllr Simon Letts said: “I’m probably going to have a little review of the slippage position and see if there are any common themes that we can draw out from that review.”