SAVING RUCHILL COMMUNITY CENTRE
Glasgow City Council has questions to answer amid £300,000 taxpayer dosh spent on keeping scaffolding up outside a project already more than double original costings. A deprived community overlooked
The Ruchill Community Centre fiasco is an exemplar of how the SNP are routinely failing Glasgow. A mismanagement project, budget blackholes and public cash wasted amid an allergy to scrutiny and accountability
Ruchill in Glasgow is one of the most deprived communities in the city, with parts registering among the top 20% most deprived deciles in the city. Life expectancy for both males and females has risen over the last twelve years in Ruchill but nevertheless remains considerably lower than the Glasgow and Scottish average.
Ruchill Community Centre is described by residents as the heartbeat of an area badly in need of support and attention. This Community Centre had been set to reopen later this month after £262,000 was secured to refurbish the fabric of the building.
Depressingly however apparent mismanagement of the project coupled with woeful decision making by Glasgow City Council (GCC) has blown the budget and left the viability of the Centre itself open to debate.
Contractors, who had planned to keep the existing roof of the Community Centre and build a replacement on-top of it have discovered deadly asbestos - already known to be in the building - was compelling a full replacement of the roof. That this realisation was only known after implementation of the project had already started is bad enough. After all, how could a project scope and requirements, necessary specifications and major activities set against timescales all have been concluded without a rigorous survey of the roof?
Why did the project managers not realise the building structure couldn’t take the weight of their planned renovation prior to implementing their plans? How could the asbestos situation - a known factor throughout - be so misunderstood? Why were there no plans to hand in the event of foreseeable problems (such as the asbestos requiring an outright roof replacement?) Someone was in charge and someone has big questions to answer.
The apparent inability to adhere to normal project management planning (PMP) has resulted in unexpected costs of £400,000 to replace the roof outright. The problem is, Glasgow Life - whose own budget has been cut by SNP run GCC - simply doesn’t have the resources. £262,000 is now 650,000.
As if all of this were not bad enough, the Ruchill Community now learns that GCC has been content to spend £18,000 per week on scaffolding. You read that correctly, the SNP have been spending £18k p/w on wood planks to sit there. The price of this? £300,000. So GCC has blown the entire original projected budgets worth on some scaffolding outside the Community Centre.
Incredibly when confronted about this egregious misuse of taxpayer funds, the convener for Culture, Sport and International Relations Committee decided to attack the opposition for daring to raise legitimate questions.
I don’t know about you, but I’d be a tad more circumspect and humble if it came to light that I’d been haemorrhaging £18k p/w on some wooden planks outside of a Community Centre whose project has been clearly mismanaged. But then, that’s just me.
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