TROUBLED tram firm TIE are reeling from yet another setback, after four of its directors resigned. It is thought the four non-executive directors left in the wake of former Chief Executive Richard Jeffrey who quit last week.
It is not yet clear why the quartet chose to leave. However, a source said: Theres a suggestion that TIE is being put into suspended animation, with the council taking the project in-house.
If that were the case you would only need a handful of people moving from TIE to the council and everybody else would be paid off.
Neil Scales, Chief Executive of Merseyside Travel, Brian Cox, formerly a board member with Stagecoach, Government official Kenneth Hogg and Peter Strachan who worked with Network Rail chose to leave their roles as non-executive directors at TIE.
It caps a frustrating period in which relations between members of the consortium working with TIE to get the tram works completed deteriorated, prompting a period the mediation talks.
As a result of these talks, the decision was made to cut back the length of the planned tram route with some existing work on the tracks needing re-done.
Estimates suggest an extra 150m-200m will need to be spent if the trams are to reach the city centre. A report is due to go before the council to assess the cost of completing the revised route to St.Andrews Square, or scrapping it.
A source close TIE said: Fewer and fewer decision were being made by the board and more and more were being referred to the council.
It was clear the dispute with the contractors had to be resolved by the politicians as it was the council along with Transport Scotland who held the purse strings and until the question about additional resources was resolved, the TIE board was virtually redundant.
A spokesman for the trams project said: Any matters relating to the board will be discussed at the next tram project board meeting and we will not be commenting further until after this point.
