Relief road consultants paid almost £25m

Consultants were paid nearly £25m to put together plans for a ring road, before the project was put on hold, it has been revealed.

On top of that, Shropshire Council paid two construction firms a combined £8m to do preliminary work on Shrewsbury's North West Relief Road.

The breakdown was set set out at a meeting of the authority on Wednesday and Labour councillor Rosemary Dartnall called the consultancy figure "absolutely shocking".

The relief road project had been put forward by the previous Conservative administration at Shropshire Council, but was shelved when the Lib Dems took over, because of the cost.

The council spent a total of £39m preparing for the relief road and another project, the Oxon Link Road.

It said the schemes would take traffic out of the town centre, reducing congestion and pollution.

The council employed WSP, a global engineering and professional services firm, to prepare the full planning application and the initial outline business case.

It paid the company £24.4m, a Shropshire Council cabinet meeting was told.

In addition, Balfour Beatty was paid just over £5.1m for managing the provision of ground investigation and piling works, while Keir received nearly £2.9m for overseeing the later phases.

David Vasmer, the Lib Dem councillor now responsible for highways, said: "I personally believe there has not been enough proper oversight of this project, and we need to make sure, going forward, this type of spending never happens again and we are in total control."

He said the spending would be reviewed so that lessons could be learnt and labelled the money spent as "eyewatering".

The North West Relief Road scheme is officially paused until the government rules it can be cancelled.

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