Garden Bridge failure ‘risks public trust in charities’

THE London Garden Bridge, which cost the taxpayer more than £50million, was “a failure for charity” that undermines public trust, the Charity Commission has ruled.

The watchdog branded the mothballed project a “high profile and expensive failure” in a report published yesterday.

About £53million of public money was spent by the registered charity, the Garden Bridge Trust, which was set up to construct and run the bridge.

The commission added that the waste of taxpayers’ money by the charity, which “produced no demonstrable public benefit or impact, represents a failure for charity which risks undermining public trust”.

Baroness Stowell of Beeston, chairman of the commission, said: “Londoners and taxpayers will legitimately feel angry and let down by the waste of millions of pounds of public money on a charitable project that was not delivered. I understand that anger and am clear that this represents a failure that risks undermining public confidence in charities generally.

“While the charity was not mismanaged, the public would also expect, as I do, that the right lessons are learnt from this case, so that we don’t see a similar failure arising in future.”

Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, killed off the plan for the bridge covered with trees and flowers in August 2017, after a damning report by Dame Margaret Hodge found that it could have ended up costing more than £200 million. At the time former mayor Boris Johnson, who supported the Garden Bridge, claimed his successor had “killed it out of spite”.

The commission advised policymakers to “think very carefully before setting up an entirely new charity to deliver a singular public project”, adding that it is “unlikely the public would expect risks that are inherent in a major public infrastructure project to be outsourced to such a charity”.