A local resident has reminded us that, when talking about funding of Honiton Beehive Community Centre, problems bagan long ago and EDDC stumped up £130,000 of ALL taxpayer’s money without apoearing to find out where the blame for the priblem originated (and it wasn’t Honiton Town Council):
“An extract from the Audit & Governance Committee agenda of 14th November 2013 summarizes progress on The Beehive community centre at Honiton[2]. The advice was that, “surface water drainage provision would be needed to a higher standard than originally anticipated to reflect potential flooding issues, especially to neighbouring residential properties.”
“HTC had not envisaged such costs in its original budgeting. EDDC officers from Property, Planning and Building Control met with HTC to assess the issue and determine a workable resolution. The various drainage scenarios and history of the issue were considered. The outcome was that, for the project build to proceed to a point where it could be signed off, a drainage infrastructure investment would be needed over and above the capacity of the existing fund. Therefore to cover the necessary works EDDC agreed by urgent verbal report to 12 June 2013 Cabinet (Part B) to fund a sum of up to 90% of a ceiling of £130,000. HTC will be expected to meet 10% of costs.”
“The reason for this urgency was that works would have to stop on the site construction and additional costs would be incurred by delay to contract. Without agreement to the provision of suitable drainage the building would not be signed off by Building Control and the planning condition not discharged. The building would therefore be uninsurable.”
This work was necessary despite the fact that the “system has been designed for the 1 in 100 year storm event with an appropriate allowance for climate change of 30%.”
The resident adds:
So in this case it seems developers or engineers or Some other outside agency miscalculated the work required, yet they all still walked away with most of the profit, leaving the Local Authority to pick up the major part of the bill for flood prevention
East Devon Watch 