£53m town hall suspended

A £53m council regeneration project has fallen victim to the uncertainty caused by local government reorganisation.

Building firms had just completed tenders to construct Waveney Campus, near Lowestoft, when the plan was halted.

The campus was to house Waveney DC, part of Suffolk CC and government agency the Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science.

But the Boundary Committee for England proposed that Lowestoft should be moved into Norfolk, while the rest of Waveney would be part of a unitary Suffolk (LGC, 10 July).

Waveney leader Mark Bee (Con) said: "We suspended work as we do not know what will be happening, even though we were on course to complete the building by 2010."

The campus would have acted as a catalyst for regeneration in part of Lowestoft docks.

Meanwhile, Waveney's new director of resources Alan McFarlane has warned the council of "very serious inadequacies" in its internal audit team. He said an external auditor had found files failed to meet auditing standards.

Waveney's audit team had told councillors it met the Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy's code of practice for internal audit, despite not possessing the document.

Waveney has had a series of poor inspection reports and Mr McFarlane uncovered £5m of budgetary risks in June.