East Ayrshire Council faces £277,00 increase in waste facility upgrade costs

East Ayrshire Council is facing an additional £277,000 bill for upgrades to two waste management facilities after previously unidentified structural and site problems were discovered during construction.

The authority has confirmed that work at Garlaff and Western Road is expected to exceed the original accepted tender values by 21% and 12% respectively.

The additional expenditure prompted concerns from councillors during a Cabinet meeting, when questions were raised about the increasing costs of the projects and the adequacy of earlier investigations.

The upgrades form part of East Ayrshire Council’s wider waste services review and include new food waste facilities.

According to the latest East Ayrshire Performs report, the original accepted tender for work at Garlaff was £852,000.

The final contract figure is now expected to be £178,000 higher, representing an increase of 21% and taking the anticipated total to just over £1m.

At Western Road, the original tender value was £811,000.

That is now forecast to increase by £99,000 (12%), bringing the anticipated final figure to approximately £910k.

The combined forecast cost of the two contracts rises from £1.66m to around £1.94m.

The council’s report attributes the additional expenditure to unforeseen conditions discovered after work began.

These included problems involving electrical systems, foundations and structural steelwork which required elements of the original designs to be altered.

The changes also affected project timetables, with extensions required to allow the additional construction work to be completed.

During Cabinet, Councillor Barry Douglas questioned whether the latest figures represented another increase on top of earlier revisions to the projects’ budgets.

He said: “I think this is the second increase that we’ve had relative to the waste management facilities in terms of the cost”.

He referred to previous budget changes and raised concerns about the wider pattern of increasing costs across the council’s capital programme.

Senior officers explained that the earlier increases and the latest contract variations related to different stages of the projects.

Initial budget estimates had to be reviewed once tender prices were received, they said, while the most recent increases arose from problems encountered after construction contracts had been awarded.

Officers said specialist investigations had been undertaken before work began at Garlaff because of the technical requirements associated with operating a waste management facility.

However, deterioration in steelwork beneath the ground was not identified until excavation work was carried out by the contractor.

The damage required additional foundation and remediation work which had not been included in the original construction specification.

Senior management argued that some problems could not reasonably have been identified without opening up the existing structure.

Councillors also discussed the importance of maintaining adequate scrutiny of capital projects to limit unexpected costs wherever possible.

The council confirmed that the additional expenditure at Garlaff and Western Road could be contained within its existing Capital Investment Programme.

This means the report does not seek approval for a separate new capital allocation to cover the £277,000 increase.

The Garlaff food waste storage facility was handed over in October following completion of the works.

The wider waste services review has already resulted in revised collection arrangements being introduced in the south of East Ayrshire in May and the north in October.

The council expects the overall rollout of the new waste collection service to be completed by spring 2027.

Cabinet members were asked to note that both waste facility contracts were expected to exceed their original accepted tender values by more than 10%.