It means items like desks and chairs have cost the taxpayer more than the total cost of all “preparatory work and design fees” during Stage 1 of the development, which cost £2.2 million.
A further £1.3 million has gone on “IT” and £1.4 million on further “professional fees”. Both those figures also exclude VAT. It means for each person who could work at the new offices, an average of approximately £12,000 has been spent on furniture, design and IT.
It makes you wonder whether anyone in WAG has heard of DFS and their half-price sales?
More seriously, this does, yet again, raise issues about how government procures goods and services in Wales? Indeed, the most important element of this is where they procured the "loose furnishings" from? Were these bought from local companies in North Wales or from outside the area?
As I noted earlier this year, less than a third of the contracts awarded for the Llandudno Junction Assembly HQ had gone to local companies with the rest going to North West English firms.
Perhaps the next piece of research by Andrew's team will be to determine how many of these contracts for items such as furniture are actually procured with firms within the local area, especially as such capital projects are allegedly supposed to create and support local jobs.
