Birmingham’s design strategy has come under renewed fire after the city council admitted it would not hold an international competition for its new £190 million library.

Despite earlier claims to the contrary, the council said this week it would take the Ojeu-advertised tender route because a competition would take a year to organise and cost £1 million to run.

Council director of planning and regeneration, Clive Dutton, told BD that international competitions were “beauty parades” and that a tender process was equally capable of attracting “world-class” architects.

“With competitive tender, the focus is on finding an architect who can work with stakeholders over time to develop this fantastic project,” he said.

But the RIBA said international contests were cheaper and quicker than Birmingham suggested.

“According to our guidelines, a competition of this scale should take no longer than six months from start to finish,” said Linda Roberts, RIBA’s deputy competitions manager. “The costs involved wouldn’t even be a tenth of the £1 million stated.”

Ex-council leader Albert Bore, who backed the aborted Richard Rogers scheme, was also “sceptical” of the Ojeu proposal. “This is not a design-led initiative. The fixation on price could mean a scheme of lesser quality,” he said.