Kept in the dark over mysterious new Lothian Buses directors​​​​​​​ - John McLellan

The council’s transport committee are being asked to approve the appointment of three new non-executive directors to the board of Lothian Buses, in which the council owns over 95 per cent of the sharesThe council’s transport committee are being asked to approve the appointment of three new non-executive directors to the board of Lothian Buses, in which the council owns over 95 per cent of the shares
The council’s transport committee are being asked to approve the appointment of three new non-executive directors to the board of Lothian Buses, in which the council owns over 95 per cent of the shares
Imagine you are the owner of a large organisation, and you are asked to approve the appointment of three new directors. Your first question would be to ask who they were.

On production of three names, your next request would be for their CVs or biographies. And if the answer was “I’m sorry, all we have is the names,” it would be understandable if your response was to refuse to agree anything until the information was provided.

But that is the extraordinary situation in which members of Edinburgh City Council’s transport committee find themselves today, whose consent is necessary for the appointment of three new non-executive directors to the board of Lothian Buses, in which the council owns over 95 per cent of the shares, to go ahead. Yet they only have names to go on.

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Of course, Peter Strachan, Stephanie Rivet and Loraine Strachan have already been through a recruitment process, but they mean nothing to me, and I’ve no reason to believe committee members will be any different. My brief enquiries with others usually in the know drew a blank.

I expect the more diligent councillors may already have made enquiries or asked Google for assistance so they are up to speed for the meeting, but the point is the information should be in the report they are being asked to approve. It should therefore be for the interim director of place, Gareth Barwell, to explain why he signed off such an obviously inadequate document.

From my investigations, it appears the proposed new directors do bring appropriate expertise and knowledge, but it’s a nonsense that councillors need to become intelligence agents to unearth information which should be public knowledge.

If I’ve got the right people, self-employed “strategic advisor” Stephanie Rivet (no jokes about nailing it, please) should know a thing or two about transport, having worked for Virgin Trains for over 13 years and then for Stagecoach for nearly six. Loraine Strachan is the finance director at law firm Anderson Strathearn who also chairs Highlands and Islands Airports Ltd’s audit committee and spent seven years with Menzies Aviation in South Africa. So, she knows about money and has transport logistics knowledge, albeit about planes.

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But the third appointment is the most interesting. There are lots of Peter Strachans about, but is this the same vastly experienced rail director Peter Strachan who was a director of Transport for Edinburgh and the benighted Transport Initiatives Edinburgh (TIE), the companies responsible for the original tram project as it spiralled into catastrophe?

It took all of yesterday morning to confirm it is indeed the same Peter Strachan who resigned in 2011 after the infamous Mar Hall deal was struck to resolve the dispute with the construction contractors which ground the project to a halt, paying them some £70 million extra to get on with the job?

And judging by his statement to the Tram Inquiry, he was still defending the way the project was handled nearly ten years on.

I’m sure his return to the local transport company is all above board and perfectly reasonable, but it’s blindingly obvious that councillors are entitled to know his background and ask any questions they deem necessary.

Just like non-executive directors, their role is to scrutinise, not just rubber stamp. How ironic that Mr Strachan quit TIE because he’d been kept in the dark about Mar Hall.

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