NEWS CHANNEL
Following two damaging reports released last week on Milton Keynes Council's management of the city's bridges, and into the handling of the Secklow Gate bridge repairs project, MK NEWS spoke exclusively to council boss David Hill to get his thoughts.
He said: "I’m very conscious that there’s been public concern about bridges in general, perhaps Secklow Gate bridge brought some of that into focus.
"I’m keen to find a way to restore public confidence in the council’s general competence.
"I think the bridge management service wasn’t in a good state before the council entered into a public-private partnership (with regards to bridge management) in 2004, and there’s evidence it didn’t improve after that point either.
"As a council we have to accept some of that was down to the failings on behalf of the council - its inability to manage contractual relationships properly.
"This report has really prompted us to think seriously about how we organise client-side and contract management within the council.
"There are areas of the council where it’s just not as effective as it needs to be. We will be strengthening that area.
"Frankly we didn’t have enough knowledge about the state of bridges in Milton Keynes to be as confident as we could be.
"At the moment that became clear, we initiated a process with Mouchel to revise the service level agreement, but to also put in place a programme of principle bridge inspections which has been running for a year and will be complete by March 2013.
"We’ve put £1.5million in each of the next three years to fund any necessary works.
"I think the public can and should be reassured - we gripped public safety straight away as an issue, dealt with that, without prejudice to any contractual claim to Mouchel.
"The other point is this (Secklow Gate bridge) needs to be put in context - we’ve got a capital programme of around £60million and virtually all those projects are on track, on budget, delivering what we want, and in fact there’s a small underspend.
"The Secklow Gate bridge project didn’t go as well as we liked, but in the context it’s one thing that went wrong - on the whole they're on course, and on budget."
