The charity responsible for the delivery of the failed Garden Bridge project in London spent £53.5m despite not building anything, according to a new report.
Transport for London (TfL) yesterday published its final review of the project, which was scrapped in 2017 after London mayor Sadiq Khan withdrew support for the scheme.
Its report shows that the Garden Bridge Trust spent almost £53.5m on the project, £10.5m of which came from donations to the trust.
The remaining £42.9m was public money, £23.9m of which was from TfL, while £18.9m came from the Department for Transport.
This £42.9m is lower than the £60m of public funding that was originally pledged to the charity, with £30m each planned to come from TfL and the Department for Transport (DfT).
Approximately £37m of this funding was paid to the Trust in a series of grant payments tied to specific funding conditions.
TfL has now confirmed that the final amount payable to the Trust is £5.5m - this will come the DfT, and include around £500,000 for future liabilities and contingency associated with the formal wind-up of the trust in accordance with Charity Commission requirements.
TfL said this is “around 40 per cent lower than it could have been”.
Alex Williams, director of city planning at TfL, said: “As part of our continuing commitment to transparency, we have published the final financial breakdown for the Garden Bridge project, on behalf of the Trust, as well as all evidence sought as part of this review.
“We worked to ensure that the cost to the public sector has been kept to a minimum, and having carefully reviewed the Garden Bridge Trust's request, we have now confirmed the final payment legally required under the terms of the underwriting agreement made by the government.
“This formally ends our involvement with the project.”
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