I have spent quite a lot of time over the last few months criticising development agencies – the worst unelected QUANGO of the bunch. I have, in particular, one pet project that, although I wholly support the dream, I know it has, and will be dashed – by bad management from the Development Agency in my opinion.

The project is NIRAH – the National Institute for Research into Aquatic Habitats. It has an amazing vision: to create a giant aquarium where the lifecycles of fish will be examined. I have been assured that there will be no animal testing at the site, just perfect unpolluted waters where the fish will be examined and researched. There is a lot about fish that we do not know.

The site that was chosen for this magnificent dream was a brick pit in Bedfordshire. NIRAH entered into negotiations with the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) and Bedfordshire County Council (BCC) to borrow money to get planning permission and get their business plan written. All they had was a vision.

EEDA and BCC decided that the vision was strong enough and that the consortium could deliver. A target of a year was set and the loan of £4m was agreed. This was split into £2million up front and more on completion of the key deliverables – a planning application and a business plan. Delays in producing these meant that, before these were delivered, NIRAH had in fact been lent just over £3.2m of taxpayers’ money.

The business plan and planning application were delivered over a year late. Price Waterhouse Cooper were brought in to review the business plan (at further expense to the taxpayer) and decided that the plan made little sense – even a layman could see that the visitor numbers being higher than the London Eye was maybe a little over-ambitious.

The plan had also changed from being largely research to becoming a tourist facility. This, of course, sails close to the wind on what Local Government can finance. Hotels, conference facilities, a cinema and a huge water theme park were among the new plans.

When outline planning permission was granted in November last year, many of us breathed a sigh of relief: finally there should be some outside investment. This was such a big scheme that surely an outside company would want to invest now that planning permission was there. Although I should point out that the planning permission is conditional of finding an access route to the site, the current one is not viable.

At the beginning of March I was interviewed by File on 4, along with other local politicians and one of the main players in the consortium, who admitted that they had less than £2m of external funding but more than £1m. That week the consortium flew out to Dubai to try to raise yet more money – they need £600m to build this fantastic dream.

However this week the Executive of BCC will meet again, in private, to discuss the NIRAH project. A local paper has reported that this is for yet another loan. I cannot comment as I have not seen the papers on this Executive, and even if I had they would be confidential. But if this is the case it seems the dream is just a dream and taxpayers’ money has been wasted on a deal that could never work. If it was to have worked why could they not generate private finance from day one, rather than wasting money on a dream?

Susan Gaszczak is currently the Deputy Leader of the opposition on Bedfordshire County Council. She was elected by her peers to the East of England Regional Assembly in 2007 and holds the position of Group Whip. In December she was selected to stand for Parliament in South West Hertfordshire.