From the very beginning, this project was nothing but a farfetched dream, a flight of fancy, that turned into a farce, that ultimately simply threw millions away for absolutely zero to show for it.
The idea to build a bridge with a garden on it was proposed by the actress, Joanna Lumley, as a monument to the late Princess Diana as far back as 1998, but didn’t garner full-hearted support until 2013 when the mayor of London at the time, Boris Johnson, put his weight behind it.
The Garden Bridge was to be an oasis in a concrete jungle where residents could go to unwind, gather socially, and get back to nature. All worthy ideals for the hectic life of a capital city dweller.
Planning permission was given in 2014, signed off the following year with the Garden Bridge Trust group incorporated to run the show. Financing for the project was a combination of private and public funding, which was loosely expected to total £200 million,
The go-ahead was given in January 2016 when a contract for a construction company was signed, and the Garden Bridge was on track to becoming reality. The wheels came off as quickly as July.
It shockingly came to light that there was no permission given to actually build on the land slated for the bridge, despite £2.76 million already paid for design work, over £300,000 on planting vegetation, £148,000 on visualizations, £418,000 on an event to find more donors, £1.3 million on marine geotechnical surveys, and £161,000 on a website.
While a formal review was being undertaken, preparatory work continued unabated in the background, racking up further costs of £1.5 Million on salaries for the Trust executives, £12.7 million to Arup, a design and engineering firm, a further £7.3 million more to designers, and a whopping £21.4 million awarded to the contractors even though no land had been secured to build upon.
When the list of outlandish expenditures was brought to light, many wondered how the scheme achieved continued support from David Cameron, the Prime Minister at the time. To throw public money away on an outrageously expensive gala, on an overpriced website, artistic renderings that made the project seem fantastic, and a construction firm that constructed nothing, was simply beyond belief.
The financial mismanagement of the funds and the overall revelations of the scheme were brought to the attention of the new London mayor, Sadiq Khan. In April 2017, after further review, he quickly withdrew his initial tentative support.
A few months later, on 14 August 2017, the whole project was officially canceled when the Garden Bridge Trust was wound up. Not a moment too soon to put a stop to the debacle, but too late to recover any of the £53 million squandered needlessly on a fanciful project that had sold a dream, delivered nothing, and where not one shovel full of dirt was ever turned over.
The Garden Bridge fiasco was a cautionary tale that when certain types of politicians are put in charge of unlimited public funds, that overspends are destined to occur, and that value for money often takes second place to their lofty ambitions and fanciful dreams.