MADAM,

The Beacon’s front page article on the 19th September 2018 about the opening of Monmouth’s new school refers to the new comprehensive as ‘the £40m school’. Forty million may flatter the building’s true worth but is nowhere near its cost.

On 2nd August 2017, the council told us the final cost would be around £50m. The next month we are told that the budget figure for two schools, one in Caldicot and one in Monmouth, was £34million, but at that date the cost of the two schools had reached £90m. The Caldicot school had already been completed at a cost of £36m. That means that the cost of the Monmouth school had already reached £54m with at least another twelve months’ work

to go.

There had been a failure to correctly survey the site, which had been swampy ground. The first day’s rain resulted in the site being flooded. A bridge was built for the builders to walk over and specialists were brought in to dry the site. This resulted at one stage with the spreading of lime but that did not work.

Weeks after, the above article dated September 2017, York specialists were still on site.

The site had required the demolition of the town’s swimming pool and so the cost of building a new pool, and also as that led to alterations to the leisure centre, means that this work is part of the cost of the new school. I would not be surprised if the true cost of the new school is much nearer to £100m than £40m. If the school had been built on site one, it may have been built at a cost nearer to the budget figure of £17m

This money is our money and we have elected councillors that appear to be more concerned about A-boards in Church Street than protecting our children and money. They should call for an independent, in-depth investigation into all that has occurred on tis site.

G J Powell,

(Monmouth)