£278,000 FOR BOG

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 August 1940, Page 4

£278,000 FOR BOG

BUILDING PLAN ABANDONED.

How £250,000 was wasted on a site for an Air Ministry building in Scotland is described in the fifth report from the Committee on .National Expenditure issued recently (says the London “Daily Telegraph”). It is stated that early in 1939 the Air Ministry acquired 160 acres of land adjoining an aerodrome for £26,637. “The land so acquired,” says the report, “was an undrained bog with a covering of peat up to a depth of 7ft lying upon a bed of clay. “Though, with modern engineering knowledge and appliances, it would be wrong to say that any site is impossible for the erection of a building, it would be difficult, throughout the length and breadth of this country, to find any site which was likely to prove more difficult and expensive than the site selected.” Work began in March, 1939, and in Octobei' was abandoned after a; sum estimated at £278,000 had been spent. Regarding the purchase of a site for an aerodrome in Kent, the report says it brought to light a careless and haphazard system. The site included 38 acres of fruit trees, underplanted with turnips. For the loss of the turnips the Ministry paid £1,500. By the time this settlement was concluded, says the report, -the entire crop of turnips had been pilfered. “It seems a gross case of failure to see that the Air Ministry got any value for the £1,500 which they were called upon to pay.”