Forum Topic

Over £53 million - the final cost of the "garden bridge"

We now know that £53.5 million was wasted on the bridge that was neither a garden nor an effective bridge,  without even beginning construction. What a scandal ! And when Boris Johnson was asked as Mayor at the London Assembly why he'd watered down some of the conditions that had to be met before any public money was released, he "couldn't remember." Kind of sums up Johnson in two words (though I could think of some choice alternatives).

Richard Carter ● 2827d5 Comments

£161k for a website?!?  I’d expect Bill Gates to personally build it for that!  £400k for a launch party to boot?!  When I worked in events management we’d throw high end parties at the Dorchester for almost a tenth of that!It’s not the ideas per se I object to (I quite liked the idea of the Garden Bridge), but the lack of proper financial management and scrutiny of public spend is criminal.  I dread to think how much in total is being wasted on a daily basis and what increased value and services could be achieved

Craig Fordham ● 2827d

Particularly irritating that TFL now has to fork out £5.5m for this failed project. Source is BBC website.

Katrina Black ● 2827d

"..quite liked the idea.." golly - not what local people thought I can tell you!

Lynne McNulty ● 2826d

Lol. I don’t doubt it...although I sometimes think that if all decisions were made based on the opinions of locals we’d still be living in caves!  There’s a reasonable chance that the homes we all now live in, the roads we drive on, the trains we travel on and the shops and restaurants we all frequent were vehemently opposed by locals back in the day.

Craig Fordham ● 2826d

Craig we will all be going down Putney High Street in Horse and Cart then everybody would moan about poo.

Barbara Stevens ● 2826d