'Indefensible!' £14m canal project failure would cause 'enormous' reputational damage, councillor warns

That is the view of Councillor Graham Breeze, who has questioned why Powys County Council members were kept in the dark over the £13.9 million Montgomery Canal project's potential failure.

At the authority's latest governance and audit committee meeting on Friday, September 27, members received a report from internal auditors saying there is a "medium" risk that the project will not be delivered.

This is because the funding needs to be spent by March 31, 2025, and any leftover could be clawed back by the UK Government.

As it stood at the end of March this year, the project has spent £2.431 million and had received £8.319 million of the total funding of £13.9 million.

Mr Breeze, an independent councillor said: “What has really concerned me is that the first I heard of a delay and possible loss of the funding is when I read it in the newspapers. That really annoys me.

“If we didn’t have this report in front of us today would any of us have known or when would we have known, and I’m alarmed by that.”

He said that as one of the councillors for Welshpool he had been at the centre of the project “from day one.”

“I’m very supportive of it," said Mr Breeze. "The reputational damage this would cause if we fail to deliver this project is absolutely enormous and totally indefensible.”