A TOWN councillor said he was shocked to find out that regeneration of Llandrindod lake had cost more than £400,000.
Councillor Jeff Green said that £27,000 spent on consultancy was a huge amount of money and that there were a lot of unanswered questions following a Freedom of Information request made by Llandrindod Town Council.
Powys County Council answered the FOI request with a spreadsheet of costs for the regeneration project and said the alternatives could have cost between £1m and £2m.
Many of the headings stated that the expenses were ‘miscellaneous’.
Cllr Eddy Williams said: “Miscellaneous means something you can’t allocate to any heading. That totals £30,000. Will we get an explanation of that?”
Cllr Will Francis said: “There is no information at all in this document, but so be it. The only way we can ever get any information is to go to the council offices in May or June when they open the accounts.”
Cllr Ken Richards said he did not know why the town council was bothering.
“It’s water under the bridge, it’s done and dusted,” he said. “Yes we can say we are unhappy, but the money has been spent, full stop.”
Cllr Gary Price said the alternative schemes, which included removing damaging sediment from the lake and depositing it on agricultural land or removing it to a licensed tip, would have cost more.
“But the taxpayers have paid for this,” he said. “It seems to have been spent unwisely.”
Cllr Jeff Green said he was yet to find one resident who was happy with what had been done, while Cllr Mike Hodges said he was not too bothered by the figures as everyone knew them already.
“The public are still not happy,” he said.
Cllr Williams said the jewel in the town’s crown had already been tarnished.
“We will never see it the way it was,” he said. “They have spent £400,000 on nothing. It’s not even what we were led to believe based on drawings.”