The costs of making the streets of London’s Square Mile safer for people returning to work after the Covid-19 pandemic have leapt, with the body that governs the area saying it underestimated the staffing requirements.
The City of London Corporation is working on a new transportation plan to support the capital’s financial heartland during the coronavirus recovery. The initiative centres on making streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists through road closures, supporting businesses that are reopening their premises and giving people more space to queue when entering shops and offices.
The goal is to ensure “the City remains an attractive location for business”, the corporation said.
But in an update prepared for next week’s meeting of the corporation’s planning and transportation committee, the organisation said that the staff costs for the first phase of the project are three times larger than initially expected.
That now means that the planning and transportation staff costs for the first two phases are already more than £33,000 over budget, and the corporation expects to need an extra £231,000 to cover staffing costs between now and the end of the year. The budget for the first two phases is just over £1m.
“Having undertaken the first phase of work, it has become apparent that the staff costs forecast were not sufficient for the level of detail that was required to design and deliver the proposals, the level of collaboration required across the department and with external partners such as Transport for London, or the level of internal reporting,” the corporation said.
The corporation will explore options for covering the additional costs and has asked the planning and transport committee members to note the expected overspend ahead of an update in an upcoming report.
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