Sheffield Lib Dems slam runaway cost of Fargate Container Park

Sheffield Liberal Democrats have slammed the runaway cost of the Fargate Container Park, after a Council report showed that costs have ballooned from £300k in February to £420k today.

An additional £75k of costs are yet to be invoiced, and the Council has been left responsible for running costs of £17k / month, meaning the Container Park’s total cost will likely come to over half a million pounds.

At a special meeting of the Council’s Strategy and Resources committee, Councillors took the decision to pause spending on building works on the containers. This means that traders on the bottom floor will continue trading over the Christmas break, but the upper floor bar and terrace, which is currently awaiting the installation of a lift and a fire safety report, will not open.

Councillors also heard that £10k of the monthly running costs were due to the unanticipated need to hire a generator and fuel for the containers. Officers had planned to use a mains hookup point which the Council had been paying electricity bills for, but it was discovered after work had begun that the point had been removed several years earlier.

The container park has been subject to numerous previous delays, including after Yorkshire Water objected to the location’s position above a sewer.

Councillor Shaffaq Mohammed, Leader of Sheffield Liberal Democrats, who was chairing the meeting due to several Labour absences, said “In all my time on this Council, these containers are some the worst use of public money I’ve ever seen. It seems like so many things could have gone right, but we have fallen at every hurdle.

The real worry for Sheffield taxpayers is that we aren’t out of the woods yet. I’m glad we’ve taken the decision to pause spending on the upper floor infrastructure now, but we still need to know what the future plans for the containers are going to be.

They will need to be moved in the Spring to make room for building work on Fargate, and right now I think going to the trouble of moving them to another location runs the risk of throwing good money after bad”.

Councillor Martin Smith, chair of the Economic Development and Skills committee, said “There’s a lot of lessons to be learned here. One of the big questions is why the contract for these containers was directly awarded to Steelyard Kelham, rather than being put out to tender. People are going to be rightly concerned about the lack of transparency around this”.

Councillor Joe Otten said “These containers were funded by a time limited government grant, and with these grants there is a risk that the pressure to spend the money quickly means that we don’t spend it wisely.

I think we’ve missed a real opportunity here to spend the money on something with greater permanent value. Looking forwards, we should have plans for projects which would provide real lasting value ready to go for when these time-limited grants come along.”