I read with interest D. Anderson’s letter regarding the £285,000 “wee wooden bridge over the Dour burn” ('I could have built a big house for the money spent on footbridge' Your Say, Press August 3).

In the late 1990s my company, Kingdom Engineering (Fife) Ltd, fabricated and installed a similar footbridge for the Lyne Burn where it enters the Forth at Crombie.

The costs were about £5,000 for this work and at that time may have covered the cost of a wooden garage, or garden shed, but certainly not the three-bedroom house that could be built for the £285,000, (originally priced at £500,000) in your article.

Dunfermline Press: The new £285,000 wooden bridge over the Dour Burn in Aberdour. At one stage the project's estimated cost was £500,000. The new £285,000 wooden bridge over the Dour Burn in Aberdour. At one stage the project's estimated cost was £500,000. (Image: Jim Payne)

Fearing that in my old age my memory was playing tricks on me I visited the site of my bridge, which at 10 metres long is larger than the seven metre Dour one and found its galvanised steel finish shining in the sun and none the worse for its 30 or so years of service.

Like D. Anderson I am interested to know Fife Council’s tendering process for the Dour project as local authorities are, by law, bound to get best value for the public purse.

In this regard the Auditor General’s 2009 'Best Value' report on Fife Council for the Accounts Commission found that elected members have not been sufficiently active in leading improvement and implementing the best value agenda and that management needed further development and improvements to scrutiny to enable them to demonstrate good practice.

Whatever else the single tender Dour Burn project demonstrated it must surely be the case that because of the three years inconvenience caused to the public waiting for a replacement bridge, the astonishing variation between the original, revised and eventual price, as well as their failure to find more than one contractor in the UK capable of tendering for this work, Fife Council have demonstrated anything but good practice.

Tom Minogue, Victoria Terrace, Dunfermline