Friday September 19th 2025
Tour of Britain 2021
Written by Local Democracy Reporter, Joe Sullivan
A senior council officer has admitted failings in Edinburgh’s handling of an agreement to host the start of the Tour de France in 2027.
But councillors acknowledged that no rules or laws were breached when officers undertook preparation works without the awareness of elected members.
At Thursday’s finance committee meeting, the council’s chief executive, Paul Lawrence, said work would be undertaken to help avoid officers ending up in similar situations in future.
Earlier in the meeting, Conservative councillor Phil Doggart challenged Mr Lawrence on his actions around the council’s participation in the Grand Depart.
He asked: “Given that we were pushed down a cul-de-sac, literally, why did he not bring a report, even [in private], to an appropriate committee?”
Mr Lawrence replied: “I’ve said previously, councillor, I regret that. I think it was the wrong thing to do.
“I think I should have done it differently, it was an oversight. My view is that I thought I had a steer, and that we would bring a document at the right time with all the detail for members to agree to.
“Obviously, Culture and Communities Committee have recently received a report, and I thought, having received a steer, we could wait for a substantive report – that was wrong.
“This report says that was wrong, and I’ve apologised to members for that.”
Cllr Doggart and Mr Lawrence were referring to a report officers filed in advance of the meeting, which said best practice was not followed in planning the council’s involvement.
In response to another question by Cllr Doggart, Mr Lawrence said there are sometimes situations where difficult pressures have been placed on officers by other organisations.
He said: “This has not been the most pleasant experience for what should have been a joyous announcement for the city.
“I don’t fancy going through that again, and I do not intend to do so.
“The report sets out that there are occasions when, particularly as a result of external organisations putting us under pressure with timescales, non-disclosure agreements, and so on.
“We need to have a process around that. We’ve not had a process around that, and this report sets out that we will do so.”
Conservative councillor Christopher Cowdy asked officers about a discrepancy he noticed in the report around why only some councillors were notified about discussions about the Tour.
One part of the report says only group leaders were consulted about the council hosting the Grand Depart, due to the non-disclosure agreements required.
But another section of the report said that the information could have been shared with a larger group of councillors if a private meeting was held.
Council officer Gavin King replied that he thought it was a ‘reasonable approach’ to initially only notify group leaders, due to the limited decision-making powers councillors have.
He added that, as time went on, a point was reached where notifying a wider group of councillors made more sense, but that it “may well not have pleased national governments”.
Further, he said that some partners working with the council on the Tour de France may have had incorrect understandings on how local government in Edinburgh worked.
Mr Lawrence, in response to further questioning by Cllr Cowdy, remarked he had received apologies from civil servants about the position council officers were placed in.
He said: “I think I’ve had at least two apologies from senior civil servants, saying, ‘we put you in an impossible situation, and we don’t want to do that again’.
“We would draw [a procedure] up, and we would go to those civil servants and go, ‘this is how we do it, and if you can’t work with us on that basis then we’ll have to have a conversation about it’.
“But we have to be proactive with other agencies, including the government. We can’t now because we haven’t written that down, but we need to, and then be absolutely straight with them.”
Committee convener and Labour councillor Mandy Watt said: “Gavin has already said he’s going to write a new governance procedure around this to make sure the lessons aren’t just learned, but they’re actually put into a proper governance procedure going forward.
“I think that that’s better than a lessons learned, because that’s an actual action where we’re expecting actual changes going forward, not to just say ‘we should learn from this’”.
The committee voted to require that councillors in relevant committees be kept abreast of major events the council takes part in, even if it is not required by rules around governance.
Tweet Share on Facebook
