Ministries to be Tougher with Roadbuilders
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FROM OUR PARLIAMENTARY CORRESPONDENT
THE Transport Ministry, and Scottish Home Department are to get tougher with contractors who fail to build roads in the time specified by contract.
A report from a special committee of M.P.s—the Public Accounts Committee —has revealed that for some years local Councils, and probably the Ministries, have not been claiming proper damages in cases where they have acted as agents of the Government.
The Ministries, too, have left it too much to the councils to decide what to ask for and when to enforce it. As a result, the amounts claimed have often only represented direct expenses, such as further site supervision, and no account has been taken of the loss of return on the capital invested.
The Ministries have now been advised that much stronger legal steps can be taken, and are in future to act on this advice.
Meanwhile. the Public Accounts Committee express disquiet that these questions should have remained unsettled for so many years,