Where did our money go ?

So who spent the £40 million ?

Its old news, the failure of the Leeds supertram scheme, but there are still a hundred and one questions hanging over city hall as to where the £40 million that was spent on the scheme over a ten year period went.

Back in March central government ordered an Audit Commission report into whether or not the money represented "public value for money", which considering that as ratepaying citizens we have benefitted to the tune of zero, should be a very quick and succinct enquiry, but as all government enquiries go there has been no more news since March, still, give them a few more years eh ?

This morning, on the local BBC Radio Leeds news programme a debate was fuelled about contributions to Leeds city Council that were made by local businesses during the Supertram planning process - a sum of just over £4 million was raised from city centre businesses to contribute to "public transport enhancements" which would benefit their businesses.

The esteemed leader of our council, who has ambitions to be the first publicly elected City Mayor, admitted that the "contributions" were made ostensibly to fund the supertram bid, but there were some weasel words in the documents to state that the money could in fact be used to fund any form of public transport improvements to benefit businesses.

Which is all well and good, and the request for contributions is not illegal, its a part of any standard planning application that may or may not be granted as long as the applicant is prepared to pop some money in the city coffers to enhance the environment.

The point that two bar owners were making on the programme is that they had contributed a total of £26,000 in their two planning applications, and seen, erm, nothing.

There are no new public transport initiatives at the moment, there is one in the pipeline, but then again supertram was in the pipeline, and the two bar owners were more than a bit miffed that their money appeared to have disappeared down the same pipeline that supertram did.

Our esteemed council leader mentioned that the £4million raised was still in a bank account somewhere and that £1.5million had already been spent by the people who organise public transport in the city, but he didn't know where the money had been spent because it "wasn't his department". He also mentioned that a new free bus service was now operating around the city centre to transport people around the city centre, which is all well and good but the real initiative was supposed to bring people into the city centre, not move them around a bit once they were there.

Its all a complete balls-up of a magnitude of £40million, and truthfully its not the fault of our local politicians, its central government reneging on promises whilst at the same time encouraging local politicians to spend money, lots of money, on planning applications - its only rubbing salt into the wounds to discover that the extension to the existing Manchester supertram, which was in the same sum of money as the Leeds scheme and which was also refused permission at the same time as the Leeds scheme, has now been approved by central government leaving Leeds as the largest city in Europe without a public service rapid transport system.

But never mind eh, its only our money they're spending.



Late edit - I've just noticed that the picture above is a model, either that or they intended to let lego people drive the Leeds Supertram.