A busy full council meeting yesterday, on the agenda was the delegaton of the tender of waste collection, street cleaning and litter bin emptying to the executive member and a senior officer. This is one of the largest and most important of the Boroughs contracts and we must get it right.
I have become increasingly concerned with this tender and whether it is ready to commence. Originally the proposal was meant to go to scrutiny before it went to full council but this visit was scrapped because of the general election. Instead of bringing it to scrutiny now the ruling group decided to plough on with the project. We had an officers briefing at Conservative group about the plans on Monday and it transpired that the Council still hadnt ensured the list of roads to be cleaned and litter bins to be emptied as part of the project was accurate. This incidentally may explain the unemptied bins and weeds in gutters we see around the Borough.
Now the first rule of contracting in my experience is to know the scope of what you are tendering, but no, the Lib Dem group, supported by Labour as usual, think that they know better and insisted on rushing on ignoring my proposal to take the plan to scrutiny so that we could actually be sure of what was being bid for. Given the new contract isn't required until 2026 I am at a loss to understand the rush - unless its driven by a desire to get the service levels and scope out of the public eye.
Here is my speech setting out our objection:
Given our experience to date with issues with unemptied litter bins and weed-infested roads throughout the Borough, not to mention last year's litter bin debacle where bins were slated for removal with no consultation and subsequently left unemptied as the process descended into chaos we cannot support this proposal.
This project has not been to scrutiny as was originally proposed because of the general election and I feel it is premature to delegate authority to the exec member and officers and sally forth without such a review.
The council has previously admitted that the lists of bins and streets they have are not complete and had promised to do a survey and ensure that they were accurate before the tender progressed. This seems not to have happened and we were sent lists yesterday of known bins and streets to verify before the end of August.
Incredibly, the Council do not yet know where their litter bins are and they also do not seem to have a full list of streets despite being responsible for maintenance.
Because of these omissions, I believe it is very risky to charge off down the procurement path without having a complete view of the scope of the service being tendered, I would request that the tender be delayed long enough to be reviewed at scrutiny and for a proper audit of bins and streets to be completed as was promised.
