Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity
“Altamira”, 1 Morland Gardens, with community
garden in the foreground. (Photo by Irina
Porter)
When Martin reported, just a week ago, that a
call-in meeting of Brent’s Resources and Public Realm Scrutiny Committee had
given the go-ahead for the contract for the
Council’s Morland Gardens redevelopment scheme to be awarded, you might have thought that the fate of the
heritage Victorian villa there was sealed.
The only thing that could scupper Brent’s
controversial plans to demolish the locally-listed building might be the
objections to the proposed Stopping-up Order for an area of highway between the
restored garden wall of the villa and the community garden. Council Officers,
with the encouragement of several Cabinet members, had decided in early 2019
that they could use this extra piece of Council-owned land, in order to build
more homes as part of the development. They had failed to consider the
consequences of that decision, or to take the necessary action to obtain the
Order, which led to the call-in.
The “award-winning” building which Brent wants to
replace “Altamira” with.
Alan Lunt, Brent’s Strategic Director (Regeneration
and Environment), won his right to award the two-stage Design & Build
Contract for Morland Gardens to Hill Partnerships Ltd on the evening of
Thursday 9 June. But when the agenda for the Cabinet meeting on 20 June was
published the following day, this was item 12:
‘12. Authority
to Tender for the Design & Build Contract at 1 Morland Gardens, Stonebridge.
Following on from a
call-in relating to the original contract award, this report requests approval
to invite tenders by way of a direct award under the Network Homes Contractor
Framework and approve the pre tender considerations as required by Contract
Standing Orders 88 and 89.’
The Report for this
item was “to follow”, and that was not published on the Council’s
website until the afternoon of Thursday 16 June. What had gone
wrong? This is the explanation given at para. 3.3 of the Report:
‘The council also sought to procure a contractor for
the scheme in May 2021 and May 2022 but both tender opportunities were
unsuccessful. The first tender opportunity did not elicit any bids. The second
tender opportunity elicited three bids and the council recommended the award of
the contract as detailed in the Key Officer Decision report of 20 May 2022.
This decision was subject to “call in”, during which period the Framework under
which the contract was awarded, expired and so the council is required to
procure a contractor again under a further procurement process.’
It appears that Mr Lunt may be trying to blame the
call-in for the missed opportunity to award a contract for the scheme, and the
need for a third attempt ‘to procure a contractor’. In fact, he was given a
second chance to find a contractor in August 2021, and the three bids under
that procurement process were received in November 2021. The fact that Brent
took until 20 May 2022 to decide which of the three contractors they wished to
award the contract to is no fault of the councillors who called-in his
decision. They did so because of the risk of awarding a contract for a project
which involves land that Brent does not have the legal right to build on!
Brent’s Cabinet are being asked to make a big
decision at short notice. Not only that, they are being asked to approve the
finding and appointing of a new contractor in a very rushed process, set out in
this table from the Report:
Extract from table at para. 3.6 of Cabinet Report.
The Report says that ‘the estimated contract value
of the procurement is £38m.’ The bid the Strategic Director wanted to accept in
May was £37,933,491, but that had
been made in November 2021. There was another item on the Cabinet agenda
(Watling Gardens) where the Report was also not available, and a Council
Officer has explained to me the reason for that:
‘Item 16 was not
available on that date because the need for the report has arisen unexpectedly
because of the escalation in the costs of the project due to the current
inflation situation. You may recall the challenges this situation is
causing for the council were mentioned by the Chief Executive at the recent
call-in meeting.’
That “escalation in
costs” will surely affect the amount that any contractor submitting a tender
for the Morland Gardens project is willing to offer. And if they offer an
amount within the Council’s “budget” for this scheme, what corners will they
cut in order to build it and still make a profit? This could easily become
another Granville New Homes, where what was on
paper an award-winning design was so poorly built, in order to keep “within
budget”, that it is now costing more than the original contract to remedy the
defects.
Brent Council has
made so many mistakes and bad decisions over 1 Morland Gardens, which is why
they are in the mess they are now over it. Will they plough on, digging a
deeper hole for themselves, or will they finally see sense and go “back to the
drawing board”?
Philip Grant