A pile of pigeon droppings meant a contract was undervalued by almost £1 million.

Conwy Council had put a contract out to tender for repairs to Conwy Bridge to be refurbished with consultants hired to design a tendering process.

An initial contract had been agreed to cost £687,705 but this shot up to £1,531,683.43 once the contractor was able to examine the bridge in greater detail.

The local authority had hired a consultancy to come up with a tendering process and according to the Chief Executive of the council the true extent of the work need was not realised when it was completed.

This was because corrosion on the bridge was obscured by large amounts of bird muck.

A report before councillors at the audit committee meeting said: “A considerable additional work requirement was identified once work had commenced on site which was not identified during the initial works inspection due to access constraints.

"Once work commenced it became apparent that the extent of corroded steelwork that needed refurbishment was considerably more than had originally been tendered for.

"The matter was reported to cabinet in September 2016 who resolved to increase the scope of the works whilst the contractor was on site. The additional works instructed has significantly impacted the total cost of the works.”

Gele county councillor, Andrew Wood, said: “I can’t believe we’ve not made more of an issue about this Conwy Bridge refurbishment, it’s plus £844,000.

“It’s getting close to a million pounds extra. But getting close to a million is about 0.4 per cent of our income of £200 million so it’s a lot of money.

"I am worried there is no more information out there and I’d like to know if there is a report coming out?”

He said the council should recoup some of the money paid to the consultants who designed the tendering process.

Conwy Council Chief Executive, Iwan Davies responded: “There was no negative. What they identified was work that needed to be done in any case.

“They did a survey of the bridge, it wasn’t possible to identify the extent of the works because the corrosion to the steel work was actually hidden by lots of pigeon dirt so what it identified was that the contract should have been for that bigger amount but earlier on we thought it was less. It wasn’t an over spend as such, it was a re-calibration of what needed to be done. There was a detailed report so I’m not anticipating any follow up.”

Cllr Wood added: “If you tendered with all that information in the first place then you could have had a cheaper tender. But we’re in a situation now where we have to carry on, so I’m disappointed.”