I'm not saying Atkins were committing fraud, the figures were ball park figures airing on the side of caution and even then they were not as significant as they were made out to be. Who knows what the 1st draft said and the 2nd draft.. the costs associated could have been even more favourable. If a client asks to air on the side of caution and to price for every single eventuality or even to take out parts of a report that would show estimated cost cycles to extent the life of the tower by 15-20 years at a time.. even up to 45-60 years then you would take it out. Naturally, you are working as per the clients instructions.
How do you know any of that. Do you work for Atkins?
1st and 2nd drafts are quite often just text, or no images, or a split document, rather than the full collated document, as putting it all together can be a nightmare, especially when there are a couple of daft errors to correct, which there always are.
I think you're going a bit too deep into this, I don't think it's a conspiracy, basically due to common sense in the construction industry, and also due Atkins size, and how many people would have had a hand in the report. If you were going to try and play it totally one way, you would just get in a much, much smaller firm, even a one-man band consultant, who you can at least lead to some degree.
They probably didn't even have to go down the full feasibility route, they possibly could have just torn it down and said that's that. Seems to me they genuinely wanted to see if it could be saved, and at the very least they asked a question. Most people asking for a feasibility study have absolutely zero clue what they're looking at never mind directing its content, and 99.9% don't understand it or the implications, generally, only the guy writing it does.
Working in construction and actually written many longer feasibility studies single-handedly, I'm amazed the initial repair bill was only 4.7m to be honest, it just seems like such a low figure for what it would entail. It could have easily doubled that, and certainly wouldn't have been half, that's for sure. Then 325k a year is a drop in the ocean on such a large structure. Another issue is, who is going to do the full repair works, and when, where is the labour coming from? Even in the last year many construction contracts have doubled due to lack of labour and materials, and most consultants don't even realise this as they're working from old rates, and collated knowledge from the last 10 years, it's all meaningless after such sharp rises in prices and lack of labour.
Also, most small construction firms (the subbies) are fully booked for at least a year, and you would need 10-20, agreeing on a program for something like this, it was never going to happen.
Another thing to consider is that having the local authority/ council manage that repair would have also been an absolute cluster ****, they would have had their pants pulled down by every contractor going, and no way would they have got fixed-price contracts, which means a pretend price and then a jacked-up cost later down the line.
The only way I can think that it would have been a benefit is the economical/ jobs benefit of that 10m (20m) repair bill sloshing around if the works could have been done by local companies. People often forget about this, but it's often the best argument to spend money, as you get most of it back in tax, wages, VAT, not paying out for people not at work etc.
There was absolutely zero chance that could have stood another 30 years safely, you can see that from the external images, never mind that from inside, which could not be seen. Once corrosion starts it doesn't stop, and it's impossible to deny it's happening or know the full extent of it. Putting up scaffolding on something like that would have been a massive risk to the scaffs, never mind the other guys who would have had to go inside.
There are loads of bridges over all our A-Roads and Motorways, suffering from the very same problem, and these were newer structures. There's actually a race on (and a grab for funds) to knock them down and repair them. I would much rather the money went on some of those, after seeing the state of some of them first hand.
That £1m to knock it down is the best value insurance policy I've seen. It's a shame, but it is what it is, move on and invest in the future, not the past.