Robin9 wrote:
'Recliner[_3_ Wrote:
;157610']tim... wrote:-
"Recliner" wrote in message
...-
Roland Perry wrote:-
In message
nal-septe
mber.org, at 14:49:49 on Mon, 11 Jul 2016, Recliner
remarked:
I note this report says £60 million has been "committed" so far.
What is the difference between the £40 million spent and the
£60 million committed?
I wonder how they've managed to spend so much already? Has much work
been
done on the ground?
There's some piling work going on in the river, whether it's for the
garden bridge or not, I don't know.-
Apparently not. It now looks like the bridge will get canned, after
£38m
has been spent before any actual construction work. Apparently Boris is
the
only cabinet minister in favour, and there's no enthusiasm in City
Hall.-
Anyone have any idea how you can spend 38 million on just talking about
something
it seems nuts-
It does, and it now seems the funding gap is even wider than thought:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37112199
I didn't realise the man who designed the "roastmaster"
designed this new bridge as well. He's quite a boy, isn't he?
That's one of the questions Sadiq has raised, as Heatherwick wasn't chosen
using a proper procurement process. In fact, the decisions all seem to be
based on how well Joanna Lumley knew people.
Quote:
Lumley has known Heatherwick for a long time – at least since 2004, when
her autobiography described him as a designer of “incomparable originality”
– and Johnson for much longer. When the Heatherwick Studio submitted its
bridge design to Transport for London in 2013, it listed “Joanna” as an
associate who had worked with it for more than a decade – she had been
“involved with the strategic development of a number of the studio’s
self-initiated public projects in London”. And when, on a BBC show the same
year, Alan Yentob gently quizzed Lumley about how Johnson had reacted to
her plan, she said: “I’ve known Boris since he was four, so he was largely
quite amenable.”
Human beings are, of course, social animals and tend to combine in their
own interest (some Dorset labourers were transported to Australia for it).
The question now arising is whether this London combination broke the
rules. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act and some diligent work last
year by the Architects’ Journal, we know that Lumley wrote to Johnson soon
after his re-election in 2012 saying she wanted to talk to him “most
earnestly” about her bridge – and that the mayor replied that, much though
he would like to hear her ideas, his packed diary meant that instead she
would need to meet his deputy mayor for transport and chief of staff.
Nonetheless, this meeting had its effect. Transport for London decided that
“a new footbridge … connecting the South Bank with the Temple area” was a
feasible idea. No mention of gardens there, or in the invitation-to-tender
document that followed in 2013, when TfL invited three architects to submit
footbridge designs and gave higher marks to Heatherwick in the “relevant
design experience” category, despite the other two firms having designed
many more bridges than Heatherwick Studio, which, at that time, had only
one to its name. Its winning design was for what Lumley had always wanted,
a garden bridge, though that can hardly have come as a surprise to her
given that Heatherwick and Johnson were together promoting the garden
bridge idea on a trip to San Francisco in January, 2013 – before TfL
decided in favour of the Heatherwick design.
The last and most recent disclosure prompted Jane Duncan, president of the
Royal Institute of British Architects, to call this week for a halt to the
project and an investigation into the procurement process, given “the
amount of public money at stake and the seriousness of the allegations”.
The RIBA isn’t the first body to worry. Last month the National Audit
Office said that a “high degree of uncertainty” hung over the bridge’s
value for money, and that the taxpayers’ £60m was at greater risk than the
private funding.
From
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-joanna-lumley