A DETAILED legal report into how taxpayers in Darlington lost more than £800,000 will be presented to members of the borough council’s cabinet next week – but it is due to be considered in private.

The Northern Echo today publishes leaked details of that report because we believe it is absolutely in the public interest to do so.

We believe that the people of Darlington have a right to know what led to such a significant public cost being incurred: what mistakes were made; and what lessons need to be learnt.

What is most shocking is that a flagship project of the scale of the Pedestrian Heart was so badly managed that crucial documents – supporting contracts, agreements and instructions – do not appear to exist.

It is that lack of basic file-keeping – if the documents were there in the first place – which has undermined the council’s own case for a legal challenge to recover taxpayers’ money.

Indeed, it was so bad that lawyers brought in to examine the debacle state in their report that the facts had to be pieced together from the memories of third parties.

The council insists that the end result has been worth it in bringing trade and employment to the town.

That may be so, but the costs of the Pedestrian Heart soared from £6.9m to £9.22m with disturbing errors along the way. In the private sector, heads would surely have rolled.

We appreciate that the council has given assurances that far more robust measures are now in place. We trust that is the case. But the council’s public acknowledgement that the project was not well managed, strikes us as being a significant understatement.

It was utterly shambolic.