On 31 January 2015 Barnet Council put out invitation to tender for Education & Skills and School Meals services which you can view here

http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:36188-2015:TEXT:EN:HTML

The contract was advertised & valued from £89 million up to £986 million.

The tender received only three bids from:

1. Capita Business Services Ltd

2. EC Harris LLP

3. Mott MacDonald Ltd, trading as Cambridge Education.

However, just before the contract talks began EC Harris LLP mysteriously dropped out and this is what the Council had to say:

“As you are aware, we commenced dialogue with our bidders last week.  One of our bidders (EC Harris) withdrew from the process shortly before dialogue commenced.  Whilst this is obviously disappointing, it is not unusual in this sort of procurement and I’m pleased to report that discussions with the remaining two bidders have been very positive and interesting so far.”

UNISON was concerned about the lack of bidders and sent a report to councillors outlining our concerns and calling for a postponement of the process.

You can read what we had to say here and read the response from the Council below:

“Further to your email of 8^th June 2015 and Councillor Thompstone’s response of the same date, Councillor Thompstone has asked me to provide a more detailed response to the points raised in the paper you circulated.

Firstly, in respect of the Outline Business Case and financial modelling, these were considered at the Children, Education, Libraries and Safeguarding Committee meeting in January.  At that meeting, it was made clear to Members of the Committee that the modelling was based on a series of assumptions that were set out in the Outline Business Case.  It was also made clear that the only way of testing these assumptions further and reaching an informed view would be to undertake a procurement exercise and that is the process that we are in at the moment.  I therefore see no basis on which we would benefit from revisiting either the Outline Business Case or the financial modelling at this stage in the process.  The outcomes of the procurement exercise will be set out in a Full Business Case, which will be presented to the Committee in November in order for the Committee to make an informed decision on the way forward.

Moving on to your concerns regarding sub-contracting, I can assure you that any contractual arrangements that come out of this procurement exercise would not permit sub-contracting of any part of the service without the prior agreement of the Council.  Furthermore, the competitive dialogue process requires bidders to set out their proposals for delivering services throughout the life of the contract, including the use of sub-contractors, and these proposals will be tested in full as part of that process.  The contract itself will also include robust arrangements for the management of any sub-contractor arrangements.

As Councillor Thompstone indicated in his email, it is our view that keeping all of these services together will provide the most coherent and integrated offer to schools and that excluding the catering service could reduce the viability of the venture.  This will also be tested as part of the competitive dialogue process.

The Equalities Impact Assessment is a “live” document that is updated throughout the process.  We are currently in the process of updating our detailed HR data and this will feed into an update of the Assessment, as will the outcomes of Outline Solutions.  The Assessment will continue to be updated throughout the process, with a final version being included in the Full Business Case.

It would be our intention to include arrangements for profit-sharing, open book accounting and an annual report in the contract in any event and these would apply equally to any sub-contractor.  Within Mr Whitfield’s paper, these suggestions are linked to concerns regarding there only being two bidders.  We are not seeking to appoint the cheapest bidder here, nor are bidders just competing against each other. Bids will be assessed against the evaluation criteria that we have set (of which 30% relates to financial benefit) and the successful bidder will need to meet all of the objectives that have been set for the project relating to service quality, engagement with schools and the delivery of the MTFS savings.”

It is interesting to note there is no mention of a subcontractor taking part in the talks.

To find out what happened next read Education Privatisation Saga Part Two.