The Stage

Equity councillors resign over cost of Guild House renovation

Published Wednesday 17 August 2005 at 16:45 by Nuala Calvi

Exclusive: Two Equity council members have resigned, claiming the union’s senior management team has failed to explain why the cost of works on its West End premises has risen by more than £200,000 to £754,000.

Actress Frances Cuka, a councillor for nine years, and Heather French, a member of the steering committee on the works, said the go-ahead was given to a building firm to renovate Equity’s Guild House home without the council being shown the tenders or design specifications. They added that requests to senior managers and officials to see the full documentation were not met.

General secretary Ian McGarry responded that the documents had been available to councillors “for some time”.

However, French insisted she felt the process had not been detailed enough. “The council approved [the money] without seeing the tender documents or plans, just a short summary,” she said.

“I asked the senior management team for numerous standard documents, including a copy of the schedule of works, but they did not have them. Surely when you have this situation all the information should be available.”

In her letter of resignation to the council, Cuka also questioned the decision to start the project before signing a contract with builders.

She said: “Work had already started on the building without a contract being signed. Without proper contracts in place prior to works commencing, we would have no chance of arbitration if things should go wrong. Equity’s business is contracts, so why was this allowed to happen?”

The resignations prompted a motion to be passed, calling for an investigation into the project and a report to be presented to the council by a mutually agreed referee.

McGarry said: “It is the case that no formal contract was signed before work commenced - precisely because we were still resolving the details of the project. However, in line with standard building industry practice, a formal letter of intent was signed. All documents relevant to the contract are available - and have been for some time - to any member of the council who has wanted to see them.

“Against a background of fairly considerable misinformation, the officers and senior management team of Equity have supported the call for an investigation, which they are confident will clarify the situation to everyone’s satisfaction. A report on the investigation will be presented to the September 6 meeting of the council.”

• General secretary election, page 7 of the newspaper