By Graham Smith

The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy report on Cornwall Council’s ill-fated Saints Trail cycle project identifies a number of management weaknesses which look set to be repeated without vigorous political intervention.

The Saints Trail, when completed later this year, will have achieved only 51% of its original promise.  The lessons for Cornwall councillors are clear: get a grip.

Despite nearly a year of inquiry, CIPFA fails to identify who was in charge.  There was no “Senior Responsible Owner” of the project, allowing a handful of County Hall executives who most certainly knew what was happening to dodge the blame.

For more than two years, three council officials charged their full-time equivalent costs to the Saints Trail project.  Construction costs had been included in Corserv’s annual business plan in March 2019.  Cormac was awarded the contract as an “internal direct award” without competitive tender.

The cabinet at that time had been given no specific information about the Saints Trail project but agreed the Corserv business plan anyway.  It was a further nine months before the cabinet formally gave the scheme the green light.

Despite a refusal to “name names” and identify any individuals, the CIPFA report provides an excoriating timeline of how

•  senior officials spent more than a year developing an enthusiasm for the £19 million scheme – which at one stage, in one version, was projected to cost £38.5 million.
•  re-enforced that enthusiasm with a public consultation exercise which failed to seek the opinions of the relevant people
•  entered into legally-binding and time-limited financial deals and
•  only at the last-minute sought approval from the council’s elected cabinet

A damning passage from the CIPFA report says officials believed they were dealing with “free money” and that a robust cost-benefit analysis was not necessary:

“The Saints Trails project did expose the council to considerable reputational risk as well as financial risk; including potential clawback by National Highways.  However, there seems to have been a strand of thought that the money was somehow not Cornwall’s money since even the council’s contribution was coming from a capital grant. Instead, the Saints Trails was simply leveraging significant funding to the benefit of Cornwall.”

Neither the Liberal Democrat-Independent cabinet of December 2019, nor the Conservative cabinet of July 2021, questioned publicly officer recommendations to proceed with a Saints Trail policy which relied on the compulsory purchase of privately-owned land.  Eventually those officials were forced to accept their own legal advice and abandon the pursuit of compulsory purchase orders (CPOs.)

The first blunder, according to the CIPFA, was to assume that the project as originally designed would benefit the public.  Officers believed that by providing a recreational cycle trail, intended to boost tourism, they would create economic growth.  But the evidence for this was at best fragile, and would fail to convince at contested CPO hearings.

“Another lesson learned is to carefully consider the likely outcome of CPOs before embarking on them, on the basis of a prudent assessment of how long the CPO process will take,” says CIPFA.  “This is not to imply that CPO is not a valid and legitimate approach which is suitable for some projects.  However, given both CPOs were abandoned within six months of their initiation, it does seem an unwise choice to have embarked on them in the first place.”

The council’s Lib Dem-Indy administration nevertheless accepted their officers’ advice in December 2019:  “Work had been undertaken on a range of options for the Saints Trails which identified “Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze” options, ranging in cost from £38.5m to £19.0m and reflecting different design ambitions.

“The scheme presented to cabinet in December 2019 was in effect the “Bronze” option and described to cabinet as “the core scheme that would be delivered under the terms and conditions of the National Highways Funding Agreement and the Cornwall Council match.

“From the cabinet report, it is clear that cost pressure in relation to the Perranporth to Newquay trail had already been identified but the overall budget did not change.”

The failure of councillors to question officials continued despite warnings.  “It was not until the project was reported on to the Audit Committee in January 2021 that the budget pressure of £5m was identified to councillors in a formal way and the Saints Trails was identified as a strategic and critical project.

“Further briefings provided to the Audit Committee in April and July 2021 are the only evidence we have seen of the issues surrounding the Saints Trails being raised with councillors in a formal way prior to the leader’s decisions in October 2021 and February 2022 which de-scoped the National Highways funded element of the Saints Trails.”

CIPFA also criticised County Hall for the way it relied on its public consultation exercise for evidence that the Saints Trail would actually benefit the public.

“The public consultation events in August 2019 reported very strong support, even excitement, for the Saints Trails and this is reflected in the cabinet report in December 2019,” says CIPFA.

“However, only 3.5% of the questionnaire completed at these events were completed by landowners and the one comment from a landowner included in the Public Consultation Report was “I am in support of the cycle way providing correct procedures are followed in gauging the feeling of parties involved.

“`Landowners should have been involved prior to consultation.’

“The interests of landowners are quite different from that of the public in general, including potential users of the Saints Trails.  Landowners consider that they have more at stake, especially given that some would be remaining in residence with the proposed trails crossing their land, raising concerns about privacy, security and disruption to everyday life.

“Similarly owners of larger areas of land would have had concerns over the impact on their operations.  The council needed to overcome these concerns to gain their support and to conclude successful negotiations for land acquisition.”

Although recommending that councillors should accept the CIPFA report in its entirety, County Hall’s senior officers draw no immediate lessons which would change their reliance on dubious “public consultation” exercises.  The council has already spent more than £6.5 million developing plans for a Camelford by-pass – plans which the government has rejected as poor value for money.

Public opinion in Camelford has always been divided and the council has never published a formal cost-benefit analysis of the proposed new road, now projected to cost nearly £70 million.

Council officers are also claiming that the benefit of a £57 million “Mid Cornwall Metro” railway between Newquay and Falmouth is self-evident and have refused to publish a business case.  This project seems doomed to fail, given the government’s insistence that local authorities must demonstrate community support if they are to qualify for Levelling Up funds.

Plans for another cycle trail, similar to the Saints Trail and known as the Looe Valley Trails, are still on the table in South East Cornwall.

The council’s most notorious public consultation exercise is that designed to sell its devolution deal - and plans to replace scrutiny by 87 councillors with that of a solitary mayor.  This consultation, which actually makes it very difficult to reject a mayoral model of local governance except via Question 11, closes on 17^th February.

grahamsmith@cornwallreports.co.uk