Council highways officers have criticised the Department for Transport for publishing ‘misleading’ figures showing major local schemes have gone over budget from £1.33BN to just over £2BN.

Up-to-date costs of all local transport schemes have been published on the DfT website and were reported in the Guardian newspaper earlier this week.

The release of the data follows the recent disclosure that the costs of seven Highways Agency schemes, identified in the Nichols review, have risen from £1,883M to £3,032M (Surveyor 20 March 2008).

But Matthew Lugg, head of highways at Leicestershire County Council, said the figures gave the impression local authority schemes were not well managed.

‘Some of these schemes are about seven years old, and others include developers’ contributions, but there’s no explanation of this,’ he told Surveyor.

‘Producing a spreadsheet isn’t helpful without a health warning – it almost distorts the picture.’

The spreadsheet shows that the Rugby Western Relief Road has seen costs nearly double from £20M at programme entry to £38.5M on current estimates, while costs for the proposed Mersey Gateway have soared from £209M to £390M, and the Carlisle Northern Development Route from £92M to £170M.

But the figures presented for the Mersey Gateway Project are ‘wholly inaccurate’, according to Halton Borough Council.

The £209M figure relates purely to the cost to central government, and has not changed since 2006, a spokesperson said.

He added that the DfT had apologised and would amend the table.

The £390M figures, accurate in 2007 prices, includes construction costs, required land purchase and advanced works.

Warwickshire County Council’s chief transport planner, Roger Newham, said inflation over eight years was one of a number of reasons for the Rugby relief road cost increases, as well as optimism bias, which wasn’t accounted for in 2000.

A DfT spokesperson said: ‘The Department has taken a number of steps to improve cost estimation and control by local authorities, including issuing new guidance to encourage local authorities to develop realistic cost estimates.’ : http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/regional/ltp/major/majorscheme.pdf