£440m Parliament 'near completion'

ALMOST a year and a half after it was officially opened by the Queen, the end of the road might be in sight for Scotland's most expensive and controversial building.

Holyrood chiefs have revealed that the number of finishing jobs in their shining new Scottish Parliament has fallen below the psychologically important 100-mark.

There are just 74 more "snagging jobs" left to be done around the building, which has ballooned in cost from original estimates of £40m to a staggering £440m, but Holyrood officials have emphasised that the finishing jobs will not add to the overall cost of the project.

Many of the jobs are minor, including a valve to a heater in the main chamber of the Parliament, paint work for a lamp post and the wrong label on a fan.

But some are more involved, such as extra cutting to be carried out on paving slabs around the new building.

The "under-100" milestone is a welcome development for the teams which have worked on the building since 1999 amid controversy, criticism and ballooning costs.

Last May, Holyrood planners still faced the daunting task of fixing 2,000 snags in the iconic building, including leaky windows, jamming doors, peeling plaster and wall panels that kept falling off.

The infamous "think bubbles" on the sides of the MSPs' offices, with their distinctive oddly shaped windows, were prone to leaking.

In November 2004, just a month after the royal opening, it emerged that 150 windows around the new building needed to be replaced because of problems with the seals. It took three months to replace them fully. Many of the building's windows are oddly shaped and are also made of special toughened glass to protect against terror attacks. This means that if a problem is discovered with a window, it has to be built from scratch.

A Parliament spokeswoman said: "We have consistently said that snagging is part of any new building process, whether it is a new home or a world-class Parliament building.

"It is important to stress that snagging involves no cost to the taxpayer."

Ready or not, the Scottish Parliament has managed to impress many people in the worlds of art and architecture.

Last year, the new building scooped the coveted £20,000 Stirling Prize for architecture, proof that it has real artistic quality, according to supporters of the building.

And as part of an effort to improve the image of the building, if not its price-tag, Holyrood has even been inviting design and architectural journalists to come, see, and wax lyrical about the new edifice.

Marcus Fairs, a writer with design magazine Icon, said after a tour of the Parliament: "It is one of the most extraordinary buildings built on these islands in recent years, both in terms of the richness of detail it contains and the breathtaking quality of the workmanship."

Architecture critic Deyan Sudjic claimed that the building was a "slow triumph", adding: "Scotland's Parliament is emerging as one of the finest new British buildings of the last 50 years."