City council to miss auditor deadline over Bristol Beacon refurb costs
The costs to refurbish the music hall have soared from £48million to £132million
City council chiefs admit they will miss a deadline set by watchdogs to learn vital lessons from the Bristol Beacon financial catastrophe.
External auditors Grant Thonrton last year blamed the authority for the ballooning costs of the concert hall’s refurbishment, which have soared from £48million to £132million.
In an annual report published in June 2022 they criticised Bristol City Council for “underestimating the complexity and difficulty” of the project and said the organisation failed to have effective arrangements in place to prevent the bill spiralling.
Grant Thornton urged civic bosses to take steps to ensure similar costly mistakes were not repeated on other major schemes – but a recent council meeting heard it took another 12 months for them to even begin looking into this.
And in their latest annual audit covering 2022/23, the finance experts have recommended the council ensures a “lessons learned” report is completed for the venue “as soon as possible and prior to its completion”.
The auditors’ report said: “The council has yet to fully evaluate and produce a lessons learned report.
“The council should ensure that it benefits from any lessons learned from undertaking this project and should complete a lessons learned exercise as soon as possible and not delay this until the refurbishment is complete.”
However, the Bristol Beacon is set to reopen in November but City Hall chiefs say their final draft outlining their findings will not be issued until February 2024.
In their response in the Grant Thornton report, council management said the lessons learned exercise began at the end of June led by an independent team from Arcadis, the authority’s capital strategic partner.
They said: “The lessons learned will take place in phases and is designed to provide critical lessons learned and stimulate important insights.
“Care has been taken not to add risk to the project by diverting resource as the project is currently in its critical final period.
“Initial phases will focus on data collection and analysis.
“The final phase will be January 2024 post full commercial operation of the facility.”
Marvin Rees’s cabinet approved spending a further £25million on the redevelopment in January, taking the total cost to £132million.
Grant Thornton’s latest report highlighted financial advice to the council leaders at the time that the project would be unprofitable – something called a negative net present value (NPV) – under the existing arrangements between the authority, which owns the building, and Bristol Music Trust (BMT), the charity that runs the concert hall on its behalf.
Cabinet agreed to cut all its funding to BMT when the venue reopens, but the auditors’ report says that “even with amendments the project is not likely to achieve a breakeven position”.
Grant Thornton said: “Consideration will need to be given to explore the wider potential for investment return to the council from the Bristol Beacon.
“The council has recognised that the city will benefit from wider social and economic benefits and should ensure that these wider benefits are monitored along with the return on Bristol Beacon.”
Council management said talks were ongoing with BMT and Arts Council England on a new arrangement “which removes future revenue commitments for the council and seeks to maximise future returns to the council from the Beacon”.
But Cllr Jonathan Hucker (Conservative, Stockwood) told a recent meeting of the audit committee: “The report says that even with amendments it’s not likely to reach a breakeven position on an NPV basis.
“I would say it’s a cast-iron certainty that it will not get anywhere near a breakeven position.”
Cllr Fabian Breckels (Labour, St George Troopers Hill) said the comments were “really discouraging”.
He said the reason for the costs escalating was because the Victorian building was found to have a whole raft of structural problems that were unknown before the project started.
“It feels like some people on this committee feel Bristol does not deserve a world-class venue,” he told the meeting on Monday, July 24.
Committee chairman Cllr Andrew Brown (Lib Dem, Hengrove & Whitchurch Park) said audit committee was apolitical and that questions and statements should be neutral.
A petition, which has now been signed by more than 600 people, was presented to the committee demanding an independent inquiry into the spiralling costs.