Cost-cutting measures at council pond project to cost £200k

Project managers hired to control costs on a council scheme to create a new pond at an industrial wasteland will themselves cost £200,000. 

Two watercourses running across The British site, in Talywain, Pontypool are to be redirected to create a pond to hold water as part of a land reclamation scheme. 

The attenuation pond is needed to control the amount of water that runs through an existing culvert assessed as unable to cope with a one in 100 year storm. 

Land reclamation 

The land reclamation project, led by Torfaen Borough Council, is the first phase of a project that could see the former ironworks and mining area redeveloped. 

It approved funding of up to £4.6 million for the work in July last year and at the same time gave the go-ahead for a legally binding agreement with private developer IDRIS to bring the land into commercial use, including for clean energy generation, which would be the second phase of development. 

A decision due to be signed off by the council’s acting director for the economy will award a £191,041 contract to Gleeds Cost and Project Management Consultants to provide additional specialist and technical support to the council on the phase one scheme. 

‘Resource constraints’ 

According to a report, written by Gill Lewis, the council’s group leader for economy and regeneration, the decision to appoint consultants, within the £4.6m budget, recognises the “current resource constraints within Torfaen Borough Council” and outsourcing is required to “provide project and cost management services to assist the council in the delivery of the project”. 

Gleeds, which will be appointed through a framework Blaenau Gwent Borough Council already has in place for approved contractors, will work with Torfaen’s in-house regeneration team to prepare contracts, comply with regulations and scrutinise costs. 

There will be a break in the contract protect the council should the scheme, which was granted planning permission in March, be considered no longer deliverable within the “affordability envelope”. 

Ms Lewis’ report warns there is a risk the council’s design consultant, WSP, is “unable to recommend an affordable fixed price sum with the contractors following the tender stage” and appointing cost consultants is intended to reduce the risk of budgets escalating to a point the scheme is no longer affordable.