{"id":873975,"date":"2025-09-18T21:12:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T02:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/18\/welsh-government-pays-discretionary-13-1m-to-road-contractor\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T21:12:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T02:12:06","slug":"welsh-government-pays-discretionary-13-1m-to-road-contractor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/18\/welsh-government-pays-discretionary-13-1m-to-road-contractor\/","title":{"rendered":"Welsh government pays \u2018discretionary\u2019 \u00a313.1m to road contractor\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"The-Senedd-in-Cardiff.jpg\"<\/p>\n

The Senedd, Cardiff<\/p>\n

\n

The Welsh Government has made a \u201cdiscretionary\u201d payment of \u00a313.1m to an unnamed contractor delivering parts of its Strategic Road Network (SRN) project.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The payment has been detailed by the Senedd\u2019s Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee in a report published on Monday (15 September), after it challenged the Welsh Government on the payment earlier in the year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In a letter sent to the committee in April, civil servant Andrew Goodall, who is permanent secretary at the Welsh Government, admitted that the payment was \u201cdiscretionary\u201d.<\/p>\n

He added there was \u201cno guarantee the contractor would have commenced formal dispute proceedings for amounts that were considered due\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, he said that not settling the claim \u201cwould have left the Welsh Government open to the risk of unsettled claims being leveraged by the contractor at a later date,\u201d with the contractor \u201ccom[ing] back to seeking to recover their position, over and over\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He added that non-payment \u201cwould have more than likely seen a delay to the programme\u201d which would have impacted the Welsh Government\u2019s ability to secure funding for the European Regional Development Fund for the roadworks.<\/p>\n

Goodall admitted that the three road contracts had standard Welsh Government terms and conditions which included \u201cprovisions that allocate risk around general inflation, with most of this risk being borne out by the contractor\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

However, he said the terms contain \u201cmore nuanced\u201d clauses dealing with other specific issues which may impact inflation and prices, such as changes in legislation, conflict, or rules around site operations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEvents such as the conflict in Ukraine has seen contractors become laser focused on the risks they hold \u2013 [and] they have caused contractors to push back on certain risk positions that have been longstanding,\u201d he explained.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSuch events have also resulted in contractors looking at every possible opportunity to recover their financial position on projects. The Welsh Government schemes in this case are an example of this.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Welsh Government has not responded to an inquiry about the name of the contractor which received the payment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In a written statement on 17 July, it valued the SRN at \u00a320bn as the \u201cmost valuable infrastructure asset\u201d in the principality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Will Ing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Senedd, Cardiff The Welsh Government has made a \u201cdiscretionary\u201d payment of \u00a313.1m to an unnamed contractor delivering parts of its Strategic Road Network (SRN) project.\u00a0 The payment has been detailed by the Senedd\u2019s Public Accounts and Public Administration Committee in a report published on Monday (15 September), after it challenged the Welsh Government on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":873976,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[284,46962],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-873975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-government","category-welsh"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}