Construction contractors in Edinburgh recruited to work on the city’s new parliament building are being “paid to sit around and do nothing”, according to reports in The Scotsman newspaper.

A source close to the project told the newspaper that around £90m had been spent on contractors who had not been able to start work because other contracts were running late or the part of the building on which they were supposed to be working was not yet ready.

A spokesman for Bovis Lend Lease, which was appointed to provide construction management services for the project in 1999, said the complexity of the project made it very difficult to keep everything running to schedule. For example, since 11 September 2001 all public buildings had had to be made blast-proof, which had delayed the project considerably.

Bovis Lend Lease had used agencies to recruit building contractors from as far afield as Portugal and eastern Europe as many specialist skills couldn’t be sourced locally, he added. But Bovis refuted claims that the contractors had been paid to do nothing. “There’s a knock-on effect where projects have been delayed, but they start work as soon as these areas become available.”