Pledge 12 - A review of all existing tender processes and subcontracted works to cut waste
“Review of all existing tender processes and subcontracted works to cut waste.”
It seems to have become standard procedure at WSotE HQ to make unfounded claims, with the topics ranging from their fellow councillors to Christmas lights, in which they imply that existing town council procedures are somehow “not good enough”.
It's also standard procedure for WSotE to provide neither a shred of evidence, nor the reasoning behind such statements, let alone any new ideas for improvements to the town.
To put it another way, making a big statement about “reviewing existing tender processes” implies that there must be “something” wrong with said processes - but what?
During his (lip-)service on the previous town council, Cllr Welch complained bitterly about the cost of the Christmas lights but did not say how he might improve the tender process. The answer isn't hard to find. When comparing the outgoing town council's financial regulations1) with the current ones2) only a few changes stand out where the word “tender” is found.
Most of these centre around the fact that WSotE led WTC no longer *have* a Finance and General Purpose (F&GP) committee, requiring the wording to be updated. In most cases, they have simply substituted “Council” for “F&GP committee”, and “Deputy Mayor” in place of “chair of the F&GP committee”.
The only real oddity is that tenders no longer seem to require both the mayor and the chair of the F&GP committee (or rather, the deputy mayor) to be present at their opening. This seems likely to be a clerical error however.
Minor changes then, and hardly a move towards the much vaunted “improved transparency” WSotE made such a lot of noise about in their pledges.
It doesn't look to us as though Cllr Welch has done very much at all!
On a related note, what are these “subcontracted works” anyway? We believe they refer to such tasks as:
- Grounds maintenance contract for mowing parks,
- The Northwich town council town park contract for litter picking
- The printing contract
- The cost of office coffee supplies…
Ok, you get the point - there aren’t many to choose from. WSotE have made mention of the NTC contract, but seem to have no intention of continuing the progress made by the previous town council in reducing NTC use for groundskeeping. So much for “cutting waste”.
We still await the day that any other contracts will be scrutinised by the finance working group. It's possible that current contracts simply aren’t that close to expiring, but this organ suspects that WSotE would prefer to quietly forget about this pledge.
Payments made by WSotE for contracts over the last two months are no lower than those made by the previous council, and can easily be found on WTC's Financial statements, 3)4) which show payments of £1,920 for Plumbley’s to prepare ground for wild flowers at Wharton and Over Rec., £720 to cut back hedges on Wharton Hill, and £2,250 for works at Over Rec. There has also been £800 to Craig Flynn for removing three trees and £2,340 to Northwich Tree Surgery for tree work at Wharton Rec.
Granted, it has “only” been 7 months, and it does take time to train staff to do the jobs required, but WSotE promised more than a review. They committed “to cut waste”.
This pledge was never likely to have been taken seriously by WSotE, and as such, we refuse to take it seriously either. We're calling this a MAYBE, mostly because WSotE just don't seem to take it seriously. Who knows, maybe they'll surprise us.