In 2021, the Badger’s local Town Council proposed a project to build new public toilets at a leafy recreation and community space close to a busy shopping area. The proposed facilities would be modern, environment-friendly, free to use, and aesthetically pleasing to blend in with the area. The need was undeniable, there was community support, funds were sourced from budgets, and the council applied for planning permission from the Borough Council. This was granted in November 2022, and the Town Council gleefully announced that a contract had been awarded to complete the project in February 2023, in good time for the facilities to be used during local celebrations of King Charles’ Coronation in May 2023. What could possibly go wrong?
The contractor completed the foundations, but an inspection found they had been laid in completely the wrong place! They had to be dug up and re-laid in the correct place, which didn’t happen quickly. The Town Council blamed the delays in rectification on the contractor, who in turn blamed difficulties sourcing materials and labour for the work. Eventually the new foundations were ready, and the Town Council announced that the building itself (being prefabricated in a factory 100 miles away) would soon be assembled on site and still be operational in time for the Coronation celebrations. Guess what, the building’s arrival and assembly on site was delayed. The council, pithily noting that they were fed up with being frequently let down by the contractor, was forced to announce the facility would not be operational in time for the Coronation.
When the building eventually arrived in the summer, there was a public outcry because it was very different aesthetically to that originally proposed and expected. The assembled building sat fenced off in its untidy site plot for a long time with no work taking place. In September, under pressure from the community, the Town Council committed to publishing a weekly update on what was happening to get the facility operational. Only three updates were issued, the last of which mentioned that permissions to a) connect the building to public utilities and drains, and b) for the contractor to do the associated groundworks, were still awaited. Since early October there’s been no updates from the council, and no work undertaken on the site. The community has lost confidence that there is a deliverable plan to complete the project and get the facility operational. The Town Council’s credibility is in shreds, rumours abound about the contractor’s track record with other councils, and the local community – the end users – are complaining loudly about management failings and incompetence!
Why tell this tale? Because it highlights that it isn’t just big public sector projects that go wrong, that the root causes of problem projects are fundamentally the same regardless of scale, and that ultimately, it’s always the end users who suffer and are inconvenienced…
