Diana fountain 'is sinking and must be entirely rebuilt'

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A consultant hired to review the £3.6 million attraction said it was so poorly constructed that the entire structure needed to be rebuilt.

Bob Monroe, whose firm Cirencester Engineers was called in to carry out repairs on the fountain in Hyde Park, said it leaked hundreds of litres of water a day and was sinking.

He also claimed that Royal Parks managers had finally agreed that the only way to solve the problem was to demolish it and start again.

Mr Monroe said: "The fountain is a disaster. Hundreds of litres are leaking away every day and as a result it's causing subsidence and making the paths rise up and buckle. The only way to fix the problem is to pull it all down and start again. Otherwise it will continue to fall apart and more and more money will be spent on it.

"They [the Royal Parks] don't want people to find out how badly it is leaking so they keep paying for temporary measures.

"I was told when it was built the contractors didn't have time to do it properly."

A spokesman for the Royal Parks Agency, which manages the fountain, denied there was any serious problem with the memorial.

"The fountain is not an engineering disaster. It is not sinking, subsiding or leaking." He added that any "minor leakage" and "settling" were only to be expected.

The fountain, in which people were encouraged to paddle, has been plagued by problems. Just 24 hours after it was opened by the Queen in July 2004, storms caused it to flood and a week later it was shut again so filters could be drained.

Three visitors were injured in falls and there were allegations of high levels of dangerous bacteria in the water. Since then, it has suffered further troubles with more paddlers reporting injuries and leaves clogging filters.

In January 2005 it was closed for five months of remedial work and in March the following year the House of Commons public accounts committee condemned the memorial as "ill-conceived and ill-executed".

The fountain, which attracts 800,000 visitors a year, was designed by American Kathryn Gustafson.