The collapsed contractor behind the heavily-delayed new Royal Liverpool Hospital repeatedly tried to sue the city's main NHS Trust in a bid to offset its costs, according to a major legal claim.
Carillion was the main contractor on the new 650-bed Royal Hospital project, which was due to be completed in 2017 and remains unfinished five years later.
The project had already experienced delays when Carillion dramatically collapsed in 2018 - leading to much wider complications, soaring costs and major further delays.
READ MORE: Liverpool's new Royal Hospital on course to be finished next spring
The collapse of the company, which managed huge construction projects and provided government services ranging from school meals to prison to NHS cleaning, left £7bn in debts, 3,000 job losses and chaos across government and private-sector construction projects - with the stalled new Royal one of them.
The financial collapse of the major national firm was described as a story of 'recklessness, hubris and greed', by MPs at the time, who said Carillion's directors were 'too busy stuffing their mouths with gold to show any concern for the welfare of their workforce or their pensioners.'
Now new claims have been made about the actions of Carillion bosses in relation to the Liverpool project leading up to the company's collapse.
The claims have been revealed as part of a high court legal action that is being brought against accountancy firm KPMG, which is being sued for £1.3 billion by government officials who are liquidating the collapsed Carillion.
The UK's official receiver is alleging that KPMG failed in its duties as auditor to spot misstatements in the company's accounts.
A KPMG spokesperson told the ECHO that the firm believes the claim against it is 'without merit' and that responsibility for the failure of Carillion lies solely with the company's board and management.
The accountancy firm intends to defend itself against the claim.
Within the court papers brought by the official receiver - seen by the ECHO - lie details of how Carillion attempted to sue the Liverpool University Hospital Trust across three separate claims as a means of recouping money for itself, prior to its collapse - effectively trying to blame the trust for delays on the project.
The papers state: "The claims against the Trust were not accepted by the Trust, and were ultimately abandoned by CCL (Carillion).
"There was no basis at any material time for concluding either that the claims had been accepted and/or that it was probable that the claim would be accepted or that the amount of the recovery could be measured reliably."
Even as the trust rejected the claims, and with no evidence that the claims would be successful, the receiver states that the firm's middle managers still recorded the legal claims as offsetting costs in a bid to balance the books.
The receiver alleges that KPMG signed off these accounts despite a lack of evidence as to whether the legal claims would be successful.
The papers state: "KPMG therefore failed properly or at all to take account of the fact that RLUH (the hospital trust) did not accept the claim, failed to obtain any independent evidence of the merits of the claim and relied solely on CCL’s own subjective view of the merits of the claim."
The Liverpool project was one of the company's biggest and left one of the largest holes in its balance sheet.
A KPMG UK spokesperson said: “We believe this claim is without merit and we will robustly defend the case. Responsibility for the failure of Carillion lies solely with the company’s board and management, who set the strategy and ran the business.”
Following Carillion's collapse, the Private Finance Initiative that had been used to fund the project was torn up and it was announced in 2018 that public money would be used to complete the building.
However, when new contractors arrived on the site they found significant construction problems that needed to be addressed - adding further delays and additional costs onto the project.
The new construction contractor had to strip out three floors of the building and start major work to reinforce the structure with steelwork and additional reinforced concrete.
Part of the remedial work involves replacing thousands of square metres of wrongly installed and dangerous cladding fitted onto the hospital building by Carillion.
In 2020, a report from the National Audit Office projected that the overall costs of the new Royal could tip over the £1.1 billion mark - although most of those extra costs will be picked up by private PFI investors and Carillion, rather than the taxpayer.
There is finally some good news on the horizon in terms of the new Royal Hospital, which is expected to open to the public in the summer.
Last month a trust spokesperson said it is hoped that work on the project itself will be completed this spring, with an aim to open the hospital to the public later in the summer.
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