South Scotland MSP Colin Smyth has repeated his call for a criminal investigation into the building of DGOne leisure centre in Dumfries after new revelations show that the Scottish Government have handed more than £180 million to contracts involving Kier Construction who were heavily criticised for their role in building the centre.
In response to a Parliamentary Question from Colin Smyth, the Scottish Government have confirmed that they have provided funding towards hospital and school projects across Scotland currently being built by Kier Construction reportedly up to £180million.
The company have also been linked with a series of lucrative contracts revamping Faslane naval base.
Commenting on the news, South Scotland MSP Colin Smyth said, “I am appalled that my Parliamentary question has revealed that the company responsible for the flawed construction of DGone are continuing to rake in millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money from the Scottish Government to build schools and hospitals across Scotland”.
“Kier Construction refused to take part in Professor Cole’s inquiry into DGone and it is now clear they are being allowed to brush what happened under the carpet.”
“The inquiry revealed huge failings by the company and highlighted the fact that many of the issues raised by DGone and other construction projects are similar to those being investigated following the Grenfell Tower tragedy. We have to make sure it does not take a tragedy before people wake up to what the wider lessons are from the DGone inquiry.”
“It is also morally wrong that this company are being allowed to get away with what they did over DGOne and simply move onto the next money making contract at taxpayers expense as if nothing has happened. We need to see a full criminal investigation into the building of DGone so those responsible are brought to task”.
Professor Coles report includes a number of lessons for Dumfries and Galloway Council, but concludes that “the full responsibility for the defective construction lies with the contractor”. It goes on to say that “It is a finding of the Inquiry that there were multiple failures on the part of Keir in relation to the management of the project, their approach to quality, their lack of supervision, their inadequate coordination and quality assurance of the design and construction work of sub-contractors, their employment of inadequately skilled tradesmen, and their failure to deliver a building that was properly fit-for-purpose”
