PLANS for a statue of the Queen in Romsey have been delayed after it emerged the council broke rules around advertising a contract for the work.

Test Valley Borough Council had handed sculptor Amy Goodman a £200,000 deal for the bronze statue in the town, and one in Andover.

But the authority must now put the contract out for tender again after it failed to advertise it on two websites it should have used.

When completed the statue would be outside Romsey Abbey.

The blunder only emerged when planning agent Paul Flippance put in an FOI request.

A spokesperson for Test Valley Borough Council, said: “The council recently appointed an artist to produce two new pieces of public art for Test Valley to mark Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee earlier this year.

“The authority followed a transparent and competitive procurement process to award two contracts - one for Andover and one for Romsey.

"It put out a national advert, which was widely advertised through established public art networks, and set up two panels for the north and south of the borough to review the bids it received.

"The panels included councillors and external partners and they followed rigorous assessment criteria to review the bids.

“It has since come to light that while the council did follow an open procurement process, the value of the contracts meant that they should have been advertised on two specific additional procurement portals. Regrettably, this was missed, which means that the council is in breach of procurement rules. As a result, the authority will be putting the contracts out to tender again.

"We should stress that this is no reflection on the artist or their work, and they will be able to resubmit a bid.

“We understand that this will be incredibly frustrating for the artist who won the bids and our communities who have taken part in the process. But we are absolutely clear that if it transpires that we have not followed our procurement processes, then we will do whatever is required to ensure we remedy that error.

"We are very sorry to all those affected by this, but we are working quickly to resolve the issue and move the project forward as quickly as possible.”

The new contract tender has a deadline of December 19.