I come from a business background and have had to defend my own company robustly on occasions in the past. But BAM Nuttall seem to be trying to rewrite history and believing their own story. I can accept they may have got it wrong, might have under bid the work, might have taken on too much but I can’t accept what they are saying now. They are taking the council and the people of Cambridgeshire as fools and that is not good enough.

Council leaders have described statements made by BAM Nuttall as laughable as the contractor’s Chief Executive Steve Fox has said the company needs to be told how to fix defective work on the Busway. Defective works include parts of a cycleway that have been built in a drainage ditch so they flood and are impassable for more than half the year, a car park that has been built with a gradient that does not conform with national standards so puddles form when it rains and a leaky bridge.

The latest interview given by Steve Fox where he talked about the notified defects and said” the Council has not clearly demonstrated that they are defects” and “if you tell us what to do we’ll even see if we can do it for you “. The Council has clearly indicated to BAM Nuttall why the works are defective and has even given the contractor solutions to deal with the problems. In addition BAM Nuttall told the people of Cambridgeshire in a public statement in April that it was working towards rectifying the six defects.

Any work that does not meet the standards set in the contract is documented by an independent Project Manager and notified to BAM Nuttall and the County Council. The contractor is then responsible for correcting defective work, even if they disagree with the independent assessment. Despite the public statement in April the contractors have made no meaningful progress and are now refusing to correct some defects without being instructed to do so – an order that means paying more to the contractor to correct defective work they built.

The Council has been clear that it is not prepared to accept the route on a ‘sold as seen’ basis with outstanding liabilities. Opening the route before the defects are corrected would also mean it would need to close again for the work to be carried out.