A COUNCIL was at a “disadvantage” to establish liability to claw back £2.6M for a special school ‘s roof repairs – due to key documents being lost in an email system.
Improvements to the filing of project correspondence was among the ‘lessons learnt’ by Anglesey County Council after it had to dig into its general reserves to pay for the costly repairs to Canolfan Addysg y Bont’s “living roof”, in Llangefni.
The £8.5m special needs school in Llangefni opened in April, 2014 and had been celebrated for its green design, which included a roof planted with sedum.
Completed in February, 2014, by 2021, it became apparent sections of the roof were at risk of failure.
In July, of 2021, the school’s first floor was temporarily closed and work to replace the roof started in April, 2022, eventually being completed in January, 2023.
The £2.6 million had included over £418k for scaffolding and £550k to prepare and provide temporary classrooms.
Last December, the council had announced it would not be pursuing legal action to recover the money after receiving expert advice.
Anglesey Council’s chief executive Dylan J. Williams, said at the time, that the prospect of success of seeking legal redress had been “below 50%” and pursuing the claim further risked “substantial additional costs”.
The island’s corporate scrutiny committee met on Tuesday to discuss a report entitled “Canolfan Addysg y Bont Roof Repair – Lessons Learnt”.
The scrutiny report had stated the council had been “at a disadvantage when trying to establish where liability for the roof failure rested, because several key documents were unavailable.
Councillors were told: “This was because some documents had been left in individual officers’ email accounts as opposed to being saved to shared files, and the drives that could no longer be accessed.
“Improvements to the filing of project correspondence will ensure that all relevant project related documents, including emails are archived appropriately.
“This lesson is being applied retrospectively to completed projects and will also be implemented for all future projects,” the report stated.
Cllr Ieuan Williams, suggested an amendment to the report, and asked what could be done “to make sure documents did not go missing again” and requested more information for the future.
CEO Dylan J Williams said “Looking at yourself can be difficult, but I hope this proves we are able to do that, and when there are lessons to be learned that we do try and improve for the future, that is the purpose of this report.”
Cllr Jeff Evans said it was an “extremely difficult and costly issue to remedy, but it appears now we have put in place actions that we don’t fall into that problem again in the future”.
The committee agreed to note the lessons, and to take steps to implement them, as included in an action plan included in the report.
The full report can be seen here
