Decision Details

Report of the Director of Place, Prosperity and Sustainability.

1. Further to an extensive exercise to find alternative funding solutions, this report seeks approval for a retrospective allocation of £0.479m of general fund revenue resources to manage a contractual claim and change arising from accommodating the PoliNations event in Victoria Square during the summer of 2022. This event formed part of the overall Birmingham Festival 2022 programme that complemented the Commonwealth Games. The revenue allocation will take the form of a pressure to be handled as part of the Council’s corporate budget setting and in-year budget management processes.
2. The construction contract for the City Centre Public Realm (CCPR) project was let in September 2021, with programme allowances made for accommodating known events in Victoria Square including those that formed part of the Commonwealth Games schedule and the Frankfurt Christmas Market. The Birmingham Festival 2022 programme that complemented the Commonwealth Games was developed in detail during early 2022. The timing, scale and duration of individual events including PoliNations were not able to be reasonably foreseen at the time of tendering and awarding the contract. As such, additional provision was not made within the project budget, contingency or risk allocation defined within the approved budget to manage programme based contractual claims.
3. Significant work has been undertaken with the scheme contractor to assess, scrutinise and challenge the programme and commercial impact of the contractual claim, alongside a range of scope and alternative funding options. Further to this exercise, descoping was not considered to be viable given the legal and safety critical requirements of the scheme, whilst general fund revenue resources are considered most appropriate to fund the contractual claim as no physical additionality was provided to the CCPR project.
4. A lessons learned exercise has been undertaken as part of preparing this report, which highlights that formal governance processes must be followed in a timely manner to consider, plan and where necessary appropriately mitigate all impacts of hosting events on other planned or inflight activity led by the Council. This includes short notice events and those such as PoliNations that were considered at a corporate level to be of a significant importance to the city.

Place, Prosperity and Sustainability

On 10 September 2024, Cabinet:-

(i)       Approved an allocation of £0.479m from the Council’s Corporate Contingency budget to fund an overspend incurred by the City Centre Public Realm (CCPR) project, arising from a contractual claim and change submitted by the contractor for accommodating the PoliNations event, which formed part of the UK-wide Festival 2022 and Birmingham 2022 Festival during September 2022;

(ii)       Instructed the Strategic Director of City Operations and Strategic Director of Place, Prosperity and Sustainability, working in conjunction with the Section 151 Officer and City Solicitor and Monitoring Officer, to prepare a full lessons learned paper including recommendations that build upon paragraphs 4.20 to 4.27 of the report for review and implementation by the Council’s Executive Management Team (EMT);

(iii)      Noted that an external review of the circumstances leading to the preparation and publication of the report is being undertaken (as part of a wider review looking at the Perry Barr and CCTV Control Room projects) and instructed any relevant findings to be incorporated in the lessons learned paper referenced above.