New finance chief’s “reservations” over Metrolink and municipal offices

Councillor Farooq Ahmed

The Cabinet Member for Finance, Councillor Farooq Ahmed, told councillors tonight (Wednesday 26 January 2011) of his reservations regarding the Metrolink and the £50m municipal offices.

In his report to the Council, Councillor Ahmed spoke of the recent “positive investments” in the borough but said he had reservations about the building work and the new transport links.

He said: “It is not all doom and gloom, there have been some positive investments in the Borough, for example, the new sixth form centre (£26m), leisure facilities investment (£34m), improvements in our parks (£2.5m), new health centres (£80m) and the building schools for the future programme (£196m), which were all previous government initiatives.

“Some also might be excited about the development of the Metrolink (£1.5bn) and the new municipal offices (£50m), which are well underway, but I have reservations on these two projects.

“Hopefully, we aim to have a new town centre in the coming years but need to be prepared, involved in planning and ready to scrutinise to ensure that we secure the right deal and engaging all the people in this town.”

When asked about his reservations, Councillor Ahmed said he thought instead a new state of the art train station could have been developed instead of a Metrolink that will take 50 minutes to get to Manchester.

He also said spending £50million on the new council building was a lot of money and if it had been less it would have been “money better spent.”

The municipal building was a project council leader Colin Lambert hoped to scrap when he took charge of the council but it was too late.