Tram bosses rack up £100,000 for their travel and food costs

TRAM bosses spent nearly £100,000 in under two years on foreign travel and wining and dining clients.

Figures released to the Evening News show that board members and senior management at the council's tram firm TIE spent £43,000 on flights, £20,000 on hotels and a further £30,000 on food, travel and other costs.

The figures – which come a month after it was found that TIE paid £1 million in bonuses to March 2008 – have today been criticised for being totally unnecessary.

The tram company said its top executives needed to travel to cities such as Berlin and Dublin for fact-finding missions, as well as to meet contractors Bilfinger Berger and tram builder CAF in Cologne and Bilbao. None of the trips were done on first-class tickets, the tram firm said.

Among bills paid by the taxpayer was the £4,500 that former tram chief Willie Gallagher spent on "dinners and entertaining".

Colin McLauchlan, TIE's HR and corporate affairs director, was the most frequent flyer, racking up almost £6,000 in air fares.

TIE said not all the expenses were claimed back from the public purse, and that some of the foreign trips had been booked centrally by directors for members of staff in their department. Some of the foreign excursions included press trips, which members of the Evening News also attended.

The figures, which relate to the period between April 2007 and January 2009, include a breakdown of costs incurred by project director Steven Bell, programme director Susan Clark, finance director Stewart McGarrity and Messrs Gallagher and McLauchlan.

Figures were also included for board members Brian Cox, Neil Scales, Kenneth Hogg and Peter Strachan.

Deputy council leader Steve Cardownie said: "I still have no confidence that the project will come in on budget.

"With that in mind, this seems like totally unnecessary expenditure that the tram scheme could well do without. They should cut out this kind of activity unless it is absolutely necessary. I don't see why this kind of expenditure needs to be incurred."

A spokesman for the tram project said: "During the period for which the figures relate, TIE was going through the tram procurement phase, which meant visits were required to all four companies bidding for the tram project as well as for both companies involved in the InfrCo consortium, with final negotiations taking place between Edinburgh and Germany.

"The Edinburgh Tram Project is being built by a multinational consortium which requires an element of overseas travel for a number of TIE staff in order to satisfy the tendering process. Two of our largest suppliers are based in Germany and Spain, it would be foolish to have procured services through any supplier without first having had in-depth discussions as well as inspecting the products in person.

"As you would expect for a project of this size and complexity, it is also important that where possible we visit and learn from other European cities' experiences of developing, building and running modern tram systems.

"The costs incurred in working closely with the consortium and benchmarking Edinburgh against other tram cities can only benefit the project."

Councillor Gordon Mackenzie, the council's transport convener, said the expenses incurred were justified because of the international scope of the project, but said he expected the level of expenditure to "significantly reduce" in coming months.