How can councils justify this?

ubersonic said:
I have a friend who works in the council (not specifying which one obviously) and we were chatting over lunch and this came up lol. The council have a contract they put out every few years for servicing/maintaining all the air conditioning units in their properties (leisure centres, offices, schools, etc), and they have chosen to award it to the company that put in the lowest price (makes sense so far).

It turns out the company that has won this (major) contract is a man in a van who's been in business 10 months, has zero experience with contracts like this, and who's biggest AC job with the council thus far was a botched installation that had to be transferred to another company to fix. Then it gets good (lol), the price they put in is lower than it costs to do the contract (the council officers know how much this costs) which means the guy is either going to skip/bodge some of it or go bankrupt partway through the contract.

Yet despite all this the bean counters are giving themselves a nice pat on the back over the money they have saved (haha). I just don't understand how councils can justify this type of nonsense, it's not even incompetence as the officers know this is a mistake and going to end badly, they just can't avoid it due to rules/red tape.
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Name the council. As far as I'm aware most of the tendering processes are weighted heavily on cost which is probably why Stoke employs the local tea lady to deal with and handle complaints.
 
I work for a council too. We had a restructuring early this year to save money, redundancy, changing JDs etc. It really upset some people having to reapply for their job and some invariably got the chop.

Net result: lost some good talent as they'd had enough, the posts chopped have largely been refilled and the wage bill is set to be higher than last full year :p
 
Speaking as someone who has worked at a council, what happens is that there is a tender process where companies put in bids which are untenable simply to get the contract, they then subsequently default and ask for price increases because they can't meet the KPI's. The end result is that a load of companies are contracted to do a job which they obviously aren't capable of and costs end up more than originally predicted.
 
Probably justified in the same way that our council justified spending £250k on sending seven people to New Orleans for a week in order to research what our ****** 'Cultural Quarter' should look like.
 
Malevolence said:
Probably justified in the same way that our council justified spending £250k on sending seven people to New Orleans for a week in order to research what our ****** 'Cultural Quarter' should look like.
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I think that's just straightforward corruption rather than a deliberately broken system. Much of that money would have been pocketed (£35K per person per week for a holiday? No) and the rest was spent on a free holiday. Straightforward corruption. The parallel for awarding work would be accepting bribes and/or giving it to friends or relatives (and probably taking a bribe too).
 
What amazes me is that so few people are aware of the level of cuts seen in council funding from central government over the last 10 years. It is absolutely massive and they aren't allowed to increase council tax very much to offset that cut.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-services-essential-care-safety-a8559486.html

By 2020 central funding will have fallen 77% from 2015/2016 to 2019/2020. That is £9.9bn to £2.2bn.

In total since 2010 that is £15.7bn less funding from to 2020. Go ahead and divide that by the population of England.

https://www.ft.com/content/9c6b5284-6000-11e7-91a7-502f7ee26895

Since counil tax has increased relatively modestly in that period, how do you even attempt to balance the books?
 
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Energize said:
Speaking as someone who has worked at a council, what happens is that there is a tender process where companies put in bids which are untenable simply to get the contract, they then subsequently default and ask for price increases because they can't meet the KPI's. The end result is that a load of companies are contracted to do a job which they obviously aren't capable of and costs end up more than originally predicted.
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Especially when you are under pressure to hit targets. You just kick the can down the road.

Reminds me of this.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/nov/02/west-ham-stadium-losses-retractable-seating-problems

London Stadium arrangement of West Ham + Athletics was what was pushed politically over the sustainable Spurs bid.

Rearranging seats contract was awarded at £300k a year. Firm goes bankrupt and now the real price is £8m a year. That's excluding all the other costs which are now higher than estimated, such that they lose money even running a West Ham game.
 
very poor tender process as already stated or the person in charge of tendering has no clue in what they are doing. Usually there would be a who set of specifications and procedures to be met, proper qualifications, health and safety, insurances, etc. It's not like Mr Consumer calling up a tradesman to come and fix a leak at home.
 
our local elementary school needed a new roof, tenders were put in, the selectmen went with the lowest bidder. New roof was installed, 5 years later the roof is in need of replacement and the builder had gone bust. Now we have to fork out for a new roof thats going to cost a crap load of monies again.
 
I work in the NHS. Some of the offices used to be boardrooms where the execs would meet. The boardrooms had A/C which worked fine. Last year, some restructuring took place and some departments moved into the boardrooms. They got converted into offices. Same layouts and the A/C is still fitted, but the management switched off the A/C during the heatwave because "it is too expensive to run". So it was ok to run the A/C when the £60k+ execs were there but apparently us £15k-£18k proles aren't important enough.
 
Jono8 said:
One important thing to understand about the world, is that a lot of people in positions of responsibility/in charge of things have zero idea what they are doing.
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But but but... this place keeps harping on about how people need to stop complaing, stop being poor, git gud and work for it because some people never get handed things to them. As much as some people like to brag how they worked for it. Nope. :)
 
Malevolence said:
Probably justified in the same way that our council justified spending £250k on sending seven people to New Orleans for a week in order to research what our ****** 'Cultural Quarter' should look like.
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I don't know what New Orleans looks like but I bet the Cultural Quarter doesn't look anything like it lol.
 
LeeUK said:
very poor tender process as already stated or the person in charge of tendering has no clue in what they are doing. Usually there would be a who set of specifications and procedures to be met, proper qualifications, health and safety, insurances, etc. It's not like Mr Consumer calling up a tradesman to come and fix a leak at home.
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Yeah but all of those things will be ignored if the price is right. I previously tendered on two thirty million pound contracts and witnessed some organizations being refused on a technicality just to disqualify the bid whilst it was ignored on others?
 
ethan said:
Yeah but all of those things will be ignored if the price is right. I previously tendered on two thirty million pound contracts and witnessed some organizations being refused on a technicality just to disqualify the bid whilst it was ignored on others?
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What was the technicality, it might not be as clear cut as you think. Even if it's a minor point, if they've used the wrong wording in itt documents or if it's one of the red flags in the sq designed by central government then they have to refuse the bid or risk a legal challenge. For instance Councils should refuse late bids, but most use the wording reserve the right to refuse late bids, then they have the flexibility to accept them if they don't think the extra time has allowed the bidder to gain an advantage.

Same with low ball bids, "reserve the right to refuse bids deemed to be unsustainable". The problem is there isn't the level of procurement support in Councils that they need for the sheer number of contracts they hold, and on top of that you have directors and Councillors who don't understand the process sticking their oar in.
 
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muon said:
What amazes me is that so few people are aware of the level of cuts seen in council funding from central government over the last 10 years. It is absolutely massive and they aren't allowed to increase council tax very much to offset that cut.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-services-essential-care-safety-a8559486.html

By 2020 central funding will have fallen 77% from 2015/2016 to 2019/2020. That is £9.9bn to £2.2bn.

In total since 2010 that is £15.7bn less funding from to 2020. Go ahead and divide that by the population of England.

https://www.ft.com/content/9c6b5284-6000-11e7-91a7-502f7ee26895

Since counil tax has increased relatively modestly in that period, how do you even attempt to balance the books?
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and yet they have enough money to go to New Orleans?
 
if it's one of the red flags in the sq designed by centralgovernment then they have to refuse the bid or risk a legal challenge.
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I have witnessed direct confirmation of disqualification on the same point in one tender which has been deliberately and systematically ignored with other applicants for the same bid. Stinks doesn't it. I can't mention names.
 
ethan said:
I have witnessed direct confirmation of disqualification on the same point in one tender which has been deliberately and systematically ignored in other applications for the same contract.
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And that is exactly the kind of thing that will land you in hot water unless there is a firm justification for doing it. It used to really wind me up when I heard about cases like this but that was really because the team I worked in was so good. The next job I had after that opened my eyes to the real problems that a lot of Councils have in terms of public procurement.
 
There needs to be a council reprimand order made up at some point, where enough of the resident's of a county (10% or something) can basically arrange an independent (meritocratic) leadership to come in and clean house.

Kinda like how you can now with 10% of the voting public call for a reelection, but far more important, they just seem to be immune from criticism these disgraceful council's (sure you can vote them out, but barely anyone cares about the election for it to matter).

The council's basically going out of business recently should more than prove this is required, the corruption needs to stop.
 
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