OKEHAMPTON Town Council has spent more than £35,000 on professional fees to its architect in the last 20 months, it emerged this week. Cllr Christine Marsh told members of the council?s property committee meeting on Monday she was ?amazed? at the amount spent. Since October 2003, the council has spent £36,111 on professional fees to its appointed architect, a figure which came under scrutiny from councillors. Following the discovery earlier this month that the council?s reserves were significantly lower than had been forecast, councillors appear to have adopted a sterner attitude towards analysing the money it has spent. Okehampton-based chartered architect Nils Westman said he was pleased with the progress he had made in addressing vital maintenance works on the council?s civic buildings. In the last six months of the 2003/04 financial year, the council spent £14,526 on professional fees to Mr Westman. In 2004/05, the council spent a further £19,705, more than 60% of which went towards urgent maintenance work. In April and May of this year, the council has already spent £1,880 on work relating to property maintenance and Disability Discrimination Act compliance. Cllr Christine Marsh said: ?I was amazed at the size of the figure and we haven?t got an awful lot to show for it.? Mr Westman told the Times: ?I am pleased with the work I have done for them (the town council).? He said although the total figure sounded like a large amount, he had effectively been working on three separate contracts, two of which, dry rot in the lower market hall and implementing an access action plan, were now done. Therefore, he said the figure was not going to be as high this year, unless the council asked him to undertake extra works. Mr Westman said he was pleased with the progress he had been able to make, but said the time some of the work was taking to complete was ?frustrating?. Cllr Mike Davies, chair of the property committee, said: ?We have to be careful we don?t end up spending similar fees in the future, we simply do not have the money.? Mayor of Okehampton Cllr Tony Leech said: ?It is quite a lot of money because of the amount of work the council has to catch up on because there is a backlog of work going back around 20 years.? Cllr Leech added: ?The only way to get it done sensibly was to get an architect on board.? Later in the meeting, the council agreed a step forward in the issue by endorsing the appointment of a contractor for a further programme of property repairs.
