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Metronet in court battle over delays
London Underground has launched a High Court battle against Metronet over the consortium's failure to meet deadlines for station upgrades, according to a report in Building.
London Underground claims that the tube consortium Metronet (made up of Balfour Beatty, Atkins, Bombardier, EDF Energy and Thames Water) is delayed on 34 of its schemes, including delays of more than one year to Walthamstow Central and Wanstead stations and delays of almost one year to Bond Street, Hainault, Chigwell and Roding Valley stations.
London Underground is seeking a court order to allow it to impose a revised completion schedule on Metronet. This would make the consortium responsible for any further delays to the work, and by implication, any associated costs.
The two parties have been in dispute over the delays since June last year when London Underground issued a ‘corrective action notice' requiring Metronet to complete a series of already delayed projects by new dates. Metronet argued that the notice was invalid under the terms of its contract. London Underground has taken the matter to the High Court in an attempt to force Metronet to comply with the revised schedule.
News of the dispute comes after months of deteriorating relations between the two parties. Earlier this month, London Mayor Ken Livingstone called for a review of Metronet's cost overruns. In the first seven and a half years of its 30-year contract it was revealed that Metronet has overspent by about US $1.5 billion (£750 million) and has fallen behind schedule.
After it had delivered just 14 of 35 scheduled station upgrades by March last year, the arbiter of the Public-Private Partnership slammed Metronet's ‘deficient management', saying that the company had not performed ‘economically and efficiently' during its first three years.
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