Details of Orange City Council's budget for Lords Place revealed

During an Orange City Council meeting on August 1, a last-minute addition to the agenda showed that nearly $180,000 more than the originally budgeted amount of $1.4 million had been spent on the revamp up to that point.

During the meeting, councillor Frances Kinghorne questioned what the "unforeseen" circumstances were that led to the blow out.

Council CEO David Waddell noted one of the reasons was hand railing needed to be added to the dining decks after a safety audit was completed.

Councillors Kevin Duffy and Jack Evans then questioned why specific details of what the money was spent on weren't included in the report.

"I appreciate the report and the dot points of where we've run over costs, but it would be good to have an exact figure of, if we can, some of those items to know what the big issues were," Mr Evans said.

Mr Waddell responded that a "councillor briefing" outside of the publicly accessible meetings "might be" the best place to discuss those matters. It is unclear if a meeting of the sort ever took place.

But under the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 (NSW) (GIPA Act) which states the public has the right to access certain government information, the Central Western Daily requested access to a full breakdown of costings associated with the Lords Place revamp between July 1 2022 and June 30 2023.

Two-and-a-half months after requesting the information, those figures have been revealed.

Of the $1.55 million spent during that timeframe, $500,000 was grant funding through the Streets as Shared Spaces program. The rest was funded by the council itself.

The four expenses which topped the $100,000 mark were tree pits ($486,612), footpaths/walkways ($207,588), shades and street furniture ($172,845) and seats ($142,863).

The full expenditure report obtained by the Central Western Daily is:

During the August 1 meeting, Mr Waddell did not rule out further costs: "Never say never."

Since then, a decision has been made by councillors to return Lords Place to the way it was prior to the renovation works - to the best of their ability. This will not include removing the new trees.

No timeframe has been given for when the demolition will begin, but no work will start until after a costings report is published in November.

Orange City Council did not wish to comment on the costings report.

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