Ms Katherine Licken:

I will ask my colleague, Mr. Falvey, to come in on this. This is a flagship project started in 2013. Anybody who has been to the gallery will see the value it has produced in the refurbishment of the historic wings and all that has enabled, including exhibitions such as the current Lavinia Fontana exhibition and a multitude of others since the reopening in 2018.

The project was contracted prior to the current iteration of the public spending code. Many difficulties arose in the construction, not least with the combined heating power plant in the basement. It is a heritage building and protected structure, which always complicates things. There are pipes going under the combined heating power unit and under the basement. They discovered a river or watercourse of some sort there, which delayed the works and led to extra costs. The contractor put in a claim for additional costs relating in a large degree to that. Mr. Falvey can talk to the detail. It went to conciliation, which concluded in 2021. We did not accept the conciliator’s recommendation for what the contractor should get. The contractor then activated an arbitration clause. All of this was provided for in the contract. Early in 2022, the contractor approached us with a view to settling this rather than going to arbitration. We settled and the matter is concluded.