COUNCILLORS will be strongly criticised today over the second major overspend on a construction project in a town.

Work on the pedestrianisation of Darlington town centre and the Eastern Transport Corridor road, in the town, has cost almost £4m more than expected.

An independent inquiry blamed management errors for the £1.9m overspend on the road.

The errors were made less than a year after it was revealed that the pedestrianisation scheme had gone £2m over budget.

Opposition councillors will tonight call for the resignation of Councillor David Lyonette, the cabinet member in charge of transport.

Coun Lyonette was unavailable for comment last night, but earlier said some of the problems stemmed from before he was a cabinet member.

Coun Charles Johnson, the deputy leader of the Conservative group, has prepared 60 questions for the Labour cabinet.

He said: "We cannot just brush this under the carpet. We need to restore public confidence in the systems that we operate because we are looking after taxpayers' money.

"We need to be disciplined on this. We need to find out where the faults happened -not only with the structure, but also with the people who operate the structure.

"Resources are running low and we cannot keep taking £2m hits."

The two projects exceeded their budgets by £3.9m.

The sum is the same as 2,917 annual band D council tax bills.

The overspend could buy new sports halls for six Darlington schools, or cover the £300,000 needed to give the town's pensioners round-the-clock free bus travel 13 times over.

A report by construction consultancy EC Harris found that the council's management of the road project was at fault from the start.

Compensation payments for homeowners worth £600,000 were not included in the original estimate, and diversions to gas and electricity lines could cost £872,000 more than expected.

Problems obtaining licences to deal with protected newts caused the scheme to be delayed by four months, leading to extra costs that fell to the council because of faults in the contract negotiated with construction company Birse Civils.

Council chief executive Ada Burns said last week that the problems would not be repeated because an in-house management restructure has taken place.

The Northern Echo's website has been inundated with comments since the report was released. Paul, of Darlington, wrote: "Two million quid down the toilet and no one's to blame. How predictable. How typical."

Brian, from Darlington, wrote: "In the real world, if any employees had lost a company that amount of money, it would be a P45."

The council has supplied the answers to key questions not addressed in the £22,000 consultants' report published last week.

The council's resources scrutiny committee will meet at 4pm in the town hall. You can read a full report as soon as it finishes at northernecho.co.uk

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