Budget delay may put £30m of projects at risk

The Sunday Times
February 1, 2009
Developments at Edinburgh BioQuarter, the SECC Arena in Glasgow, and Energy Park Fife Scotland could be held back by revisions

About £30m of investment in key projects being accelerated by Scottish Enterprise could be at risk if the government’s revised budget fails to gain approval in the coming weeks.
Developments at Edinburgh BioQuarter, the SECC Arena in Glasgow, and Energy Park Fife Scotland, are among capital spending projects which had been brought forward to tackle the effects of the recession.
If the revised budget fails, however, these plans would be delayed.
Scottish Enterprise would not comment on specific programmes but said it did not expect “major issues” as a result of the budget situation.

The BioQuarter is a landmark, life-science, real-estate development intended to establish Edinburgh and Scotland as one of the world’s top 10 centres for commercialising biomedical products arising from research and development.
Although there is no long-term threat to the projects, the decision to accelerate spending was hailed as an important measure to fight the recession.
The Scottish government is talking to the other parties to gain approval for its revised budget but David Watt, executive director of the Institute of Directors (IoD) Scotland, said that, even if agreement was reached, dithering by politicians last week had cost people their jobs.
“It is a disgrace,” he said. “The IoD is seriously concerned about the delays over the Scottish budget, and the political manoeuvring of this week, which has brought into jeopardy the necessary speeding of the spending at this time of massive economic problems.”
“Leadership and governance standards were absent at Holyrood this week. This is a non-party pragmatic view.
“Every day of delay costs jobs and politicians really do need to face up to this. The general public and the business community will not forgive them for the procrastination as jobs go.”