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Olympics to blame as builders shun £48m isles school bid

LONDON’S successful Olympic bid risks sinking plans for a lavish new school at the other end of the UK.

Shetland Council is being forced to hunt for contractors to build its 48m new school after failing to receive enough bids for the project.

While the building is a hefty contract by Scottish, let alone Shetland, standards, building firms have decided that there is so much work to bid for around the London Olympics there is no point heading to the Northern Isles for work.

The new Anderson High School in Lerwick is supposed to house up to 1,100 pupils in a spectacular horseshoe-shaped building. More expensive than the original estimates for the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, it was hoped it would have contractors rushing to take part in the project.

But the council has failed in its bid to attract a minimum of three potential contractors to enter into talks for the design and build of the school. It had hoped to squeeze the cost of the school by attracting enough bidders.

But the head of the council’s capital project team, Chris Medley, has said there is simply so much construction work available in the UK and Europe that even a lucrative contract like the school is of little interest to companies.

He said: “The companies we have spoken to have asked why they need to come to Shetland and take that sort of risk when they can get contracts as big as that, if not bigger, on the mainland with less risk.

“We did foresee that this was a possibility because of the Olympics and the general UK building boom. But we had hoped that there would nevertheless be enough interest.”

Medley added that the authority would be targeting larger companies on the UK mainland in an effort to attract them to the Northern Isles.

He said: “We’ll be going to them and asking just what would attract them to come and work on the school.”

But he ruled out a hefty increase in the projected price of the building as happened with the Scottish Parliament, which saw a tenfold price increase, in part due to the knock-on effect of the UK-wide building boom which forced up labour costs.

Medley, himself a former tradesman, said: “The fact that companies can basically pick and choose like this, does make you think a bit.

“Maybe a few of us should get the overalls back on and have a go at it ourselves.”

The estimated budget for the 2012 London Olympics has ballooned from initial estimates of 2.35bn to as much as a possible 9bn.