Council chiefs launch inquiry over Waygood Art Gallery
Sep 18 2009 by Adrian Pearson, The Journal
CITY leaders are carrying out an internal inquiry to discover where blame lies for a multi-million pound regeneration overspend.
The spiraling cost of rebuilding the Waygood Art Gallery in Newcastle’s High Bridge is now set to pass £10m after officers at the council handed control of the project to arts bosses. City treasurers will now have to borrow cash to ensure the building work continues.
Questions have been asked over the handling of one of the city centre’s most important regeneration schemes after a £2.7m overspend emerged.
At least part of this is directly the fault of “fragmented project management”, according to the council’s own officers. They also said the effectiveness of Waygood as “a partner, senior user and fundraiser has been inconsistent”.
Mishandling the project led to expensive delays, with the European Commission eventually withdrawing £500,000 from the gallery after bosses failed to follow funding timetables.
The council inquiry will look to see what went wrong and who handed the taxpayer a bill for at least £1.9m, with the remainder paid for by an Arts Council contribution of £800,000.
At an executive meeting this week opposition Labour group leader Nick Forbes warned that with interest added on, the final debt to the council will be much higher, and might take decades to repay. The debt could be avoided if the city decides to cut its losses and sell the flagship gallery once work is finished.
Last night Mr Forbes said: “Not a penny more should be spent on this until we know for sure what went wrong and who is to blame and action taken against those who are responsible.
