Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee. I will take a few minutes to make a statement because it is very important for the reputations of the people who are sitting in front of you and the former FETA. I hope that the committee found that the written material that we sent was useful. As you know, all that material was available to the public, and FETA was a local democratic and publicly accountable organisation, which made decisions at local level. All meetings and papers were available to the public, press and Transport Scotland.
I mention Transport Scotland because after reading the Official Report of your meeting last week, I wanted to assure you that Transport Scotland was kept informed and was involved in all decisions that were taken by FETA. The draft papers for the board were sent to Transport Scotland, representatives of Transport Scotland attended board meetings, and regular meetings were held between the bridgemaster and Transport Scotland. I would not use the phrase “a light touch”—I think that that was what was said last week—to describe the relationship between FETA and Transport Scotland, particularly in the last couple of years of FETA’s existence.
I would like to record my thanks to all the staff who worked for FETA for their dedication, hard work and commitment to keeping the Forth road bridge open over the years of the FETA board. I have chaired many organisations over my years as a councillor and rarely have I seen such dedication, knowledge and expertise as that of the FETA staff. Under their leadership and that of the FETA board, we kept the bridge open, apart from in severe weather conditions.
I will go over three decisions that other people took that were significant for FETA in terms of maintenance, management and governance. First, the bridge tolls were abolished in February 2008, which resulted in the loss of up to £12 million per annum. That money had been used to service the debt of building the Forth road bridge and for borrowing capital for bridge maintenance. FETA then had either to use reserves—which it did—or to apply for capital funding from Transport Scotland. The bridgemaster had regular discussions with Transport Scotland regarding capital funding and maintenance requirements, which would then be brought to FETA board meetings. Therefore, instead of FETA being able to plan for future investment, there was sometimes uncertainty over capital funding, as FETA had to rely on Transport Scotland for the majority of such funding.
Secondly, there was a spending review in September 2011 in which a 58 per cent cut was made to the indicative capital budget that FETA had set for 2012-13 onwards for future capital maintenance. Following that cut, a prioritisation exercise was undertaken on non-committed schemes. There were also committed schemes. The committee has a copy of appendix 3 of our submission. I was surprised that Transport Scotland did not recognise the 58 per cent cut, because in a paper from 16 December 2011—a copy of which Transport Scotland would have received—it is made very clear that there was a 58 per cut from the figure in the indicative capital plan that had been approved by the board. You will see from appendix 3 that there were priorities, although I will not go into details as we might cover that issue later. As a result of the reduction in that funding the truss end links remedial works did not go ahead.
Thirdly, in December 2008 the Scottish Government announced its intention to build a new Forth road bridge, in April 2010 it set out the case for a single body to manage the two bridges and in February 2013 it decided to transfer that responsibility from FETA to Scottish ministers and to dissolve FETA. As I understand it, Transport Scotland did not recommend to ministers the option of keeping FETA and reviewing its governance and operation. The ministers agreed to FETA’s abolition and to the transfer of responsibility for the management and maintenance of the two road bridges to a private company, and they agreed that staff would transfer from the public to the private sector. At the end of May 2015, FETA was abolished.
I also want to talk about the last two years of FETA, when I was its convener. Two issues that the board discussed and scrutinised at length gave them grave concerns. One was keeping the bridge open and having enough capital to ensure the on-going maintenance of the bridge and the work that we prioritised as the capital funding continued to reduce. At every board meeting in the last year, we were concerned about the level of capital expenditure and future investment in the bridge to ensure that it was kept open.
The second issue was keeping the senior management of the bridge until the handover, since they had the expertise and knowledge, and the trust of the staff and the board. The board was severely concerned about whether FETA could be sure of the continued good management of the bridge if the senior staff—especially the bridgemaster—left. The board was so concerned that it set up a subcommittee to discuss staffing issues and the actions that the board might take to keep the senior staff.
Because of the concerns about senior staff, the vice-convener Tony Martin and I met them individually, and they voiced deep concerns about the transfer to a private company and about their role in the new structure. FETA chief executive Sue Bruce, Tony and I then met a number of times with staff from Transport Scotland, including the head of Transport Scotland, to press our concerns about the present and future management of the existing bridge. We were given assurances. There can be no doubt that Transport Scotland was well aware of the FETA board’s concerns regarding the loss of key staff and the effect that that would have on the management and maintenance of the bridge.
I and—I am sure—other people from FETA have been upset by the headlines regarding FETA. On one hand we have been blamed for not carrying out work on the truss end links five years ago, even though we did not make the cut in funding. On the other hand, the current failure has nothing to do with that work as that was
“not where the fault has occurred”.
It cannot be both.
I apologise for my opening address being so long, but it is important that the facts are laid out about who made the decisions. I will not go into any engineering issues, as other people are far more expert on that than I am, although in the last two to three years I have become more of an expert on engineering.
The concern was voiced that it seemed that the bridge was being seen as just another road. The Forth road bridge is not just another road. As we can see, it is important to the thriving of the economy of Edinburgh, Fife and Scotland as a whole. We have seen that through the effect that the closure has had. We need to take into account that it is a structure—a complicated structure. It is a bridge, not a road. That attitude was one of our concerns as we handed it over.