Last week, Sheffield City Council released an independent report that revealed “significant procedural and control failures” over the project which aimed to get people into the city, with the containers used for eating, drinking and entertainment spaces.
But in the year since news first broke of the plans, the project saw a sewage scare, delays after delays, disagreements, vendors pulling out, low footfall, and the bar never being completed, as costs and negative press mounted.
In January this year, councillors on the strategy and resources committee voted to kill the project completely and give the containers to community groups.
The report was (about to be) discussed at the council’s audit and standards committee yesterday (November 23) but members found out that many questions would go unanswered as they hit out at “literally everything going wrong” and “losing hundreds of thousands of pounds”.
When talking about the internal audit, Cllr Simon Clement-Jones (Beauchief and Greenhill, Liberal Democrats) said one of the things he would have liked to see was “the context around the politics or the politicians at that time”.
He said it was important…
