Guest post by Philip Grant in a personal capacity
I’ve already written about my open letter to the Council Leader, seeking to ensure that voting on Brent’s award of a new advertising
lease for the Bobby Moore Bridge at next week’s Cabinet meeting is fair,
between the two options that bids were sought for.
In this article, I will share my concerns over whether the way in which
the Council carried out the process for awarding this contract gave a fair
chance to advertising companies other than the existing “supplier”, Quintain
Ltd (or its Wembley Park subsidiary).
The new lease was published as an open Invitation to Tender (“ITT”) on
the Contracts Finder website on 15 February 2024, just as any other similar
procurement opportunity would be. As the Officer Report to the 28 May Cabinet
meeting shows, it produced 18 expressions of interest from organisations who
might consider bidding:
The Report does not go on to say how many of the 18 organisations
actually made a bid! This seemed odd, so I wrote to Brent’s Chief Executive,
and the Corporate Director (Partnerships, Housing and Resident Services) who
had signed off the Report, late on Friday afternoon, and asked them to let me
know the number of bids received, saying this ‘is surely not "exempt
information"!’
I received a reply, although not the answer, from the Corporate Director
on Tuesday afternoon. In brief, it said:
‘On this occasion, the number of bidders and the
sums bid are commercially sensitive and therefore cannot be disclosed. … Sharing
the number of bids received regarding this tender process could risk
prejudicing this particular procurement …. I apologise that on this occasion we
cannot disclose more information.’
Ever since I obtained copies of the tender documents back in February, I
have felt that the answer, the number of bids, might be just one (or only one
which successfully made it through the vetting process which the Council had
set out in those documents for bids received). It now seems that I will never
know for sure.
The publicly available Report recommends that Cabinet: ‘Approve the
award of a contract for Bobby More Bridge Advertising … to Quintain Ltd.’ As Quintain’s Wembley Park subsidiary already
has the current advertising lease, and the advertising display screens in
place, it was always unavoidable that they would have an advantage in the
bidding process. But did the process reinforce their advantage, and if so, was
that by accident or design?
I have taken a close interest in this matter, as I was the person who in
early 2021 suggested to the Council Leader and then Chief Executive that when
the advertising lease came up for renewal it should be by competitive tender.
That should ensure the Council received the best possible income from
advertising on its Bobby Moore Bridge asset, which in turn would make it
possible to consider an option that would allow the heritage tile murals in the
subway to be put back on public display. Carolyn Downs agreed my suggestion in
March 2021.
I exchanged emails with Brent’s current Chief Executive earlier this
year, to check that the competitive tender process agreed with her predecessor
was going ahead. When she confirmed that was the case, I wrote:
‘Can I suggest, please, that the term of the lease
for which bids are invited should be five years from 31 August 2024.
There are two reasons why I believe that this makes
sense:
1. The existing advertisement consent (necessary to
be able to advertise on the Bobby Moore Bridge) runs until 16 September 2029,
so that five years from 31 August 2024 would be covered by that consent.
2. The reason why the four year lease to 30 August
2021, as approved by Cabinet, was extended by three years (at the request of
the leaseholder, Wembley Park Ltd), was to allow five years use of the new
advertising screens which the leaseholder installed in 2019. It was said that
being assured those screens could be used for five years would make their
installation commercially viable.
If any new advertising leaseholder needs to install
their own new equipment, or purchase the existing equipment from the current
leaseholder, a five year term would be more commercially attractive than a
shorter term, and make it more worthwhile to offer a good price in the tender process.’
Kim Wright replied: ‘Thank you for your suggestion and we will consider
this as part of our thinking.’ But when the ITT documents were published, this
is what they said about how long the advertising lease would be for:
One of my concerns is that the Council Officer(s) who handled this
bidding process were the same ones who handled the “secret” 2019 lease
extension, using the commercial need for five years use of the LED advertising screens
that Quintain installed as justification for changing the August 2021 end date,
on the lease which Brent’s Cabinet had approved, to August 2024! They would
understand the importance of that fifth year to potential bidders, and yet ….
When my enquiries in 2021 uncovered this lease extension, and some “very dodgy” features of it (especially over “proving” that the rent to be paid was best value), I
complained to the then Chief Executive that there appeared to be “too cosy” a
relationship between Quintain and the Council Officers involved. Were their
actions here affected by that cosiness?
If potential bidders were not put off by only having four years to generate
a profit from advertising on the Bobby Moore Bridge, after paying Brent a
guaranteed minimum annual rent, they faced completing a number of detailed
forms, and doing so within a tight time frame (by noon on 18 March). One of the
most complex was the Quality Statement, with separate forms to be submitted for
each of the two options. This was the introduction and first question on the
Option A sheet:
When you had worked your way down the form, this is what you would find at
Question 5:
Quintain would definitely have an advantage in answering this question,
as they had already installed this infrastructure in 2019. New bidders would
have to do site visits, and research about local electricity supply, before
they could start to prepare this detailed implementation plan. Yet all six of
the questions had to be answered, and all of the other forms completed as well,
otherwise your bid would be invalid (not a ‘compliant Tender response’). And
then your answers would be evaluated, by Council Officers.
I was surprised when I saw the weighting which was being applied to the
various aspects of the bids:
As the Council was supposed to be seeking the best economic return from
advertising on its Bobby Moore Bridge asset, only giving the amount offered 35%
of the overall score seemed rather low (although I don’t claim to be an expert
on procurement!). As indicated above, Quintain’s prior experience of installing
and operating advertising at the site would appear to give it a big advantage
in the Quality/Technical section, which accounted for more than half the total
score. And even though Social Value only counted for 10% of the weighting, this
included features such as local employment (I’m sure you can guess where
Wembley Park Ltd’s employees work).
I asked in my title: ‘Was the Bobby Moore Bridge advertising lease
bidding process fair?’ I still can’t answer that question, but you will
understand that I have my doubts about it.
Philip Grant.
