Transcript

The administration things, there's no five rules scheduled for tonight so if the alarms go it's for real and basically fire exits that door, I'm not too sure about that one, but there's a fire exit over there as well. Before I start the meeting, I'd like to welcome to new members to the meeting tonight. So that's Nick Grant, John Trolop, Claire Vickers is absent, John Campbell, I know, and Councillor Jules Perry, so welcome. All the members are, Carrie, basically he was sitting on this committee last time around. I'd also like to welcome the cabinet members for leisure, I've got LC-GNS, so I can't remember what my short hand was for, but welcome anyway to David Skip. First item, whether you're generous apologies for absent, so I've got apologies from Claire Vickers. Apologies from Councillor Sam Bateman and Councillor Jonathan Taylor as well. Thank you. Next item, one of your generous minutes, basically the last meeting we had was Monday the 18th of March. I take it, all members of red the minutes, and can we take them as a correct recording of the meeting or if there's any corrections to be made, can you please raise your hand and let me know, or else I will sign these as So can I have a proposal and a seconder, for Councillor Bevis, Councillor Serkis, give me an email, I will initialise. a a a a (silence) (silence) (silence) (silence) (silence) (silence) I'd also like to welcome the two directors of services that are with us five plus officers who are attending to answer all the questions which I'm sure you're all burning to ask about various topics that we're going to cover tonight. Announcements. Basically, there are no announcements from myself. I will bring up at the end of the meeting an urgent task and finish group which you have been circulated with, which needs to be addressed under urgent business. But no comments from chief executive or myself. Item five on the agenda is the return of the Obbori cultural contract. I'm sorry. I was ahead of myself. Decoration's interest. Yes, Jeff. In that case, if I recall correctly, you've declared an interest. Basically, if you have any specialist knowledge, correct me if I'm wrong. If you have any special knowledge or whatever, then basically you can't really go into it. Yeah. Thank you. Any other decorations of interest? No. Done announcements. So back to item five, return of the albori cultural contract. It's not about whether we should have an albori cultural contract. I mean, the reason why I've asked for it to come to committee tonight and for officers to come and explain is more about why we are where we are, what lessons we learned and things of that nature, really. And what's likely to happen in the future and look at that point of view. So it's not really to discuss whether we should do this. It's to look at the nitty gritty of it. Basically, so I'll hand over to the cabinet member or the director in charge of service, or I'll hand over to Helen, who will answer the questions which no doubt we will receive from various members of the committee. When Helen's done a presentation and discussed it with everyone, then basically we will also take questions from the floor. Thank you, Helen. OK, I thought it might be just helpful given the focus this evening just to run through the process in terms of firstly the procurement process for the previous contract. And then the contract management took place was the contract was actually being operated. So in terms of the procurement process itself, you can see from the cabinet reports or the draft cabinet report that the contract actually commenced in April 2022. But prior to that, there was an extensive procurement process that had to be undertaken. And as a result of that, seven bids were submitted under the tender process. One bid was immediately rejected because it didn't include the mandatory information that's required. Six were then scored and analysed, and that was scored and analysed on a balance of 60% price and 40% quality. One bid was rejected as it didn't meet the council's quality threshold. One bid was rejected due to have an abnormally low price. So the contract that won the bid wasn't actually the lowest bidder. There was another lower one, and that was rejected. So that left three to be scored, and three bids scored lower than the successful contractor for both price and quality. So in terms of the successful bidder, obviously, they scored the highest for both quality and price. What is useful to note, and this is something that the officers are certainly taking on board in terms of the new procurement process, is that the concept successful contractor didn't include a nominal cost for tree inspections, that formed part of the contract. This was clarified on numerous occasions by both the procurement team and the other officers involved in the procurement process. They stated quite categorically that they did not withdraw from the bidding process. They would accept the loss rather than withdraw, and they claimed that they had capacity within their inspection team to carry out the works. And as I say, that related to the tree inspection, what the actual tree works themselves. And the other bids were about 80,000, 80,000 pounds higher than the successful bidder. Moving on then to the contract management process itself. Issues started to arise in November 2022, so not that long really after the contract had been in place. So what's known as rectification notices started to be served, which is where the contractor has five working days to make good defaults, basically. And if they can't do that, then default notices are then issued. That process continued through until October 23, with numerous discussions, default notices served and good contract management processes in place. It resulted in the termination of the contract in December 2023 by neutral consent and an award from the contractor to the council to compensate for some of the costs of the council would have to carry, given the failure of the contract. So obviously officers will be carrying out a full lessons learned exercise. We are about to start that process. Obviously, in terms of the procurement process itself, we will look at aspects like the specification and the other aspects such as the 60/40 split between price and quality. We'll also be looking at whether tree inspections will be part of the contract. I suspect it probably will be, but that's something that we will also look at. And obviously, there's one of the options that we're thinking of in terms of a new approach. This needs to be explored, particularly in terms of the market engagement process, is to reduce the risk of the failed contractors to use something called a framework agreement. And that's basically where there would be several suppliers on the contract. So that obviously reduces the risk of the council. It has certain disadvantages potentially in terms of the staff that are managing the contract. But that is the process that we're actually using as an interim solution at the moment. Obviously, there's health and safety implications from not having a tree contractor in place at the moment. So we have an interim solution with four, I think, contractors that are Sussex-based, that are being drawn on a case-by-case basis. So we are spreading the work and not favoring any one particular contractor. Having said that, obviously, in terms of a disadvantage, as I say, the advantage of a framework where we're using different suppliers is that not having a single point of failure. So tree works are extremely specialized. So we would be able to draw on suppliers that have those specialisms. So that would run from felling an oak tree, for example, which is obviously a big piece of work to, you know, sort of polluting that kind of thing or smaller scale works where this same specialist equipment might not be required. So it would give us that flexibility. And that's the sort of thing that, with advice from the procurement manager, we would be looking at through the next procurement process. And as I say, I've already mentioned that we would want to look at this 60, 40% split in terms of quality and price. I think that was all I was going to cover in terms of just a general overview of the procurement process itself and then how we've extracted ourselves from the contract, which I have to say was, I think was done in a very speedy manner, and the contract management process worked. I think that's the other aspect I want to stress is that contracts will fail, but actually the contract management approach that was taken was effective and we ended up in a position of successful mutual termination of the contract. Thank you, Chair. Thank you all. Do any other officers wish the same thing? At this point, questions from Councillors. I mean, there were some questions by email, but I'd rather take the questions from around the room first because it's probably more convenient. Councillors circus first, then Councillor Bevers. I've got three questions. One is why do we not? We just want to interrupt. We won't go into the financials of it. Okay, we're just looking at the outline contract bits, yes. Okay, do you think I'm going into the financials if I ask why we didn't get full recompense? No. Okay. Well, that's my first question. Why in the circumstances didn't we press for full recompense, not just partial recompense? Secondly, we have this division between price and quality. I'd be interested to know who in the Council judges quality. Is it our other cultural officer or is it somebody else? Is it a group of people who actually judges the quality of the people we are using in these contracts? The other point I wanted to make, which is that I don't understand why the contract seems to be split into several different companies. If you take 9.1, it says, of course, it's vital that the Council has robust measures to ensure the risk to the public is minimized. So health and safety. The risk is being managed through the use of four local contractors. Maybe I'm missing something here. I mean, we use a company that manages the trees that we have. It's a sizable company. It does major work for UK power networks. And they manage all aspects of the job that they do, which includes health and safety. And I don't see how you can divorce the one from the other. In fact, I think it's a bit of a cop-out to take health and safety away and split it up in this fashion. It seems an easy way to let certain people off the hook. So I think my question there is, why do we not expect? And these are fairly major operators that we're contracting with. Why they can't be responsible for the rest of the public. And they probably should be providing a service of that kind. Why can't they be responsible for all aspects of the service we require? Thank you, Jeremy. Thank you, Councillor service. If you don't mind, Councillor service, I'll start with your last question first in terms of answering that. So the reason that there's a couple of reasons that we've split it. This is the interim solution that we're in in terms of an emergency situation. And that approach was agreed by legal and procurement colleagues because we had to have contractors in place. This is a statutory requirement to do the tree works and there is a health and safety issue if we don't. So the reason for requiring several contractors rather than one is that if we only went with one, they wouldn't be able to bid the next time around. They would be in a difficult position. We would be favouring one contractor when we then go out to the full procurement process later this year. So it makes sense to split it up evenly between local contractors to do the work. And as I said, they're managed on a case-by-case basis according to the work that's required at that time. Thank you. Thank you for that. In terms of the issue around pushing for full compensation from the contract, I think essentially it was around the fact that we knew they weren't delivering the contract. They've written to us to tell us they wanted out of the contract. Had we entered into negotiations for full contractual payments, we still be in negotiations now. There was no value in either party continuing those. We've got a responsibility to deliver the service. We negotiated a satisfactory level of compensation that reflected the impact on us financially. And we managed to conclude it swiftly and cleanly. Sorry, so are we saying the compensation reflected our costs? Because earlier it was suggested it only reflected part of our costs. They reflect part of our costs. Well, why if they failed on the contract, are we not looking for full indemnification of our costs? I don't understand that. I think because, essentially, the sum which was negotiated was satisfactory to mitigate against the additional costs. And it was the sum that they were prepared to pay. So that happened lawyer to lawyer in their negotiations, were we pushing for full contractual costs? We'd be eating up officer time on seeking that and we wouldn't have the resource to focus on delivering the contract. So it was an expedient outcome. I'm just going to say, it might also be worth noting that we know that a neighbouring authority did not secure such a good amount of money that we did in terms of when their contract failed. So I think because that contract management had been so strong, we were actually able to secure a higher amount of money than a neighbouring authority has done in terms of their approach. And who judge his quality? Yes, we're coming to that now. Thank you. So the price quality split is judged. The price is based on an estimate of the potential tree works. Obviously, we can't give an exact figure because we don't know what trees are going to fail when. But we provide an estimated average of world based on what we've done over the previous years. The quality basis is we provide as part of the procurement a number of quality questions and ask all of the suppliers to give us answers to those questions so we can try and judge against that. It is an exam based process rather than we can't, under procurement, we can't judge it by anecdote. We can't judge it by prior knowledge. It has to be based through that procurement question process. So it was members of the procurement team, myself, the upper cultural officer. We're all involved in judging those questions. Councillor BEVERS. Thank you, Chairman. In 1.2, it mentions that the previous contract was a joint procurement process with Prori. Did that result in a joint contract or was it just a procurement process that was for culture and quality? And what's happened to Prori since? So it was a joint procurement process. As you know, we have a joint procurement service. So the procurement process itself was joint but the contracts were individual in terms of us having a contract and then having a separate contract. Yes. In terms of Prori Barre Council, I don't know exactly what position they're in at the moment. I don't know if people want to say. To my understanding, they have recently, I mean within the last few weeks also come to a mutual agreement with the contractor as to they're going their separate ways. So is there a basement contract or is it also a joint procurement? We haven't determined that yet. That was a discussion that we will have to have also, obviously involving our procurement advisors. Thank you. Any other questions and committee members? Councillor Walledes. Thank you, Chair. It was just a follow-up, really, to the question of quality. You were saying about, we don't use anecdotes or something like that or ask knowledge. I wonder if I was buying a kitchen, I might ask if I could see some work that they've done. That seems to be something that do you ask to do that? I'm sure Pete can give you more information but certainly we don't also take up references as part of the procurement process. And we are aware of where other contractors have worked. So we can go and do visits but obviously if you ask a contractor to show you their best work, they will show you their best work. If we do a drive-by, we may see some, you know, it then becomes very getting messes to just walking around someone else's park. And I have no idea when that work was done and who it was done by. So it isn't quite as important for you. Thank you. [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] Yes and we specified last time that the contractors needed to be members of the Abora Cultural Association, which is the professional membership organization. And we also asked that they all follow, I can't remember which British standard but British standard on tree works. So the previous contractor does both, is still a member of the Abora Cultural Association. So there is a minimum but that's a problem, it's a minimum standard. Thank you. [BLANKAUDIO] Thank you, Chairman. [BLANKAUDIO] In terms of the Abora Cultural contract, not to my knowledge, it was with one company for that last 10 years or so. And saying that the grants made this contract, I don't know about other contracts. It's obviously that's something that we can raise with the procurement team, we're not experts in terms of that process and they'll have our oversight of other other contracts. So that's certainly something that we can raise with them. I'm not aware of any others, but then we're not at the center in terms of the procurement process across the organization. [BLANKAUDIO] Thank you, Chairman. I think I know the answer to this, but I think it's worth asking. Can the previous contractor still apply on this open procurement system? So he could win back this contract, this contract. In short, yes, they can. We had to comply with the public procurement regulations, so we cannot exclude somebody. However, they do have to obviously adhere to what we put out in terms of their specification and the contract requirements that we're asking for. To be honest, I think this is a discussion that we've already had with the procurement team, and it's one of the thought processes that we have for why we're looking potentially to use framework. It might therefore be less attractive to one large supplier, which was the, obviously, the previous experience that we had, but they would still be able to put in a bid if they chose to. And obviously, we would have to market according to the quality and price criteria that we set out. Thank you. Councillor Baehwin. There are lots of very small local companies operating in this area. I'm just wondering, as part of this, would they be able to bid for involvement as a way of supporting our local economy and our local businesses? So, my understanding from on the procurement manager is that is exactly what the new procurement acts asked us to do. And although this current procurement process that we're going through won't need to adhere to that, we will be mindful of that consideration in terms of the repayment process. Councillor Lussbaum. Thank you, Chair. Question here is around, have we got the balance rate? You mentioned, sorry, have we got the balance rate? You mentioned 60% on price and 40% on quality. Well, the old energy is never by on price, and here's a great example. Why not? So, should we not be thinking about changing that balance? So, maybe 60% on quality and 40% on price. And I assume when you mean price, you mean value for money. So, we will be looking at that. So, 60/40 is the standard that's set out in the procurement code, but that is part of the consideration that as officers we will be giving with advice from the procurement manager in terms of whether we continue with that 60/40 split going forward with this procurement process, basically. So, yes, we are alive to that consideration. Thank you, Helen. Any other questions from the committee? I'm afraid you're going to have to sit through mine now. First question that I raised was, why was the contract such a long-term contract? Because according to mine for me, for what I've read, it was seven years. I think that's very unusual. Or is this not an unusually long contract to have? Was there a need to amortice some sort of capex spending or something? Because a seven-year contract for me is very long, four or five years at a pinch. This is my first question. In short answer, yes, it was that aspect in terms of procuring the necessary equipment and that kind of thing. So, my understanding, again, through the market engagement that took place prior to the procurement process, that's the sort of information that's gathered through that. What is the sweet spot in terms of the length of the contract? If it was shorter, we would be unlikely to have contractors applying for the contract, basically. So, this may well come up again when it's being a long-term contract in the next reiteration. I don't know if I'll put it that way. Okay. You've had my question, so I'll go, but I'll still read them for the committee. If the three inspections were not included, was this due to how clear the job scope was given to the company? It would appear from what's been said already that it was clear because the others accepted it whereas this one didn't. But the point making is all the other companies quoted for transactions on this basis and this one didn't. Should that not have run a alarm bells? And I know you sought not guarantees, you sought them. Basically, that it would be all right to pursue it, but surely that should have run a alarm bells? It did, hence why the procurement team, and I use that in the widest sense, challenged that position. And that process was followed in terms of questioning why they hadn't included it and whether they wished to withdraw their bid. They chose not to withdraw their bid and said that they would internalize those costs themselves with a saving to the council. So, in other words, that they would carry the cost, which is what you've explained, that's fine. So, therefore, the next thing that arises from that is what lessons have been learned from this, from what's happened and what you're saying is too early to tell because you're doing a study of what's happened and why. What's come out is that the exit protocols were strong because we got out of it well in inverted commas, I'll put it that way. But that is part of the procurement protocols, but is there anything in this that we should be looking at our procurement protocols for the other parts? Basically, in other words, our procurement protocols are strong enough or clear enough to avoid this happening again. So, are you talking about the contract management process itself or the procurement process to acquire the new contract? Well, actually, so I'm talking about the theoretical and then looking at the practical coming forward, basically. So, I think this is demonstrated that the contract management process was strong, actually. As soon as it became evident that the contractor wasn't able to adhere to the requirements of the contract, then the team were able to actually challenge them and did so with the necessary notices that need to be served on a contractor, and then there was a timely and quick resolution to the issue, which has allowed us to move forward. So, I think in terms of contract management, and again, talking to the procurement manager this morning, she confirmed that the process is in terms of the contract management itself or strong. As I say, in terms of the procurement process itself, that is something that we will look at in detail, obviously, now, in terms of any lessons learned that we can take from the process in terms of the re-precurement. Does that answer your question, Paul? Thank you, yes, I mean, all it prompts in my mind is presumably, we will get feedback from that when it is finished. You're short of note or something, or even an officer just coming in for 10 minutes to explain what's come out of it would be very helpful, please. I'm finished yet, Belinda. Can I finish mine first, please? Sorry. Just now you touched on something, which I felt very interesting, which is really quite a question by Sam Bateman over there, because my question is, a comment has been heard about the new procurement act, and in this context, what does the new procurement act mean and how does it affect us? And if we don't know, when will we know? You've seen the question, so I presume you've got an answer. So, this is obviously something more directed to the procurement manager. The new procurement comes in to force on the 20th of October. As I mentioned earlier, due to the time scales with this current process, we'll actually be adhering to the previous set of regulations. But we will be using some of the principles in terms of the new act, such as an obligation to involve local and small, medium-sized enterprise supplies. In terms of the more wider context in terms of the implications, I'm sure that's something that the procurement team are all over, in terms of understanding those implications going forward when it comes into force for October. And undoubtedly, I would imagine we'll be briefing officers as and when it's required for new contract processes. Thanks, it ties into the point that Sam Bateman made about smaller local companies rather than... Yes. Which then leads me to my next question, which was basically what prompted a decision to reach? I mean, basically you've explained what prompted a decision to split the contract up amongst several different companies. There was a pragmatic approach to the fact that it failed with one big company, so we split it up, spread the risk and bias time to redo the process if I've understood what you said correctly. Think of it. But for me, it then immediately raises the question of what are the advantages and disadvantages of splitting it amongst different companies. And surely, isn't this an alternative model to the one which failed? And is that something that you are looking at? And if you're not, shouldn't we be looking at that? In short, the answer is yes. That's what the framework approach would take. That's basically the framework approach is actually having a raft of contractors on that framework that officers could draw on for appropriate types of work. It spreads that risk and allows us to go to contractors. People know a lot more about this than I do, but will allow us to go to contractors that are good at that specific part of tree work because it is a very specialised service. Obviously, the potential disadvantages are more work for the officers managing that contract. So that is something that we will also need to consider when we're going forward with a procurement. I appreciate that that model does actually imply more management time, if I can put it that way, to manage it. But on the other hand, the split of that is about a quality of what's being delivered. And that's something that needs to be assessed and looked at. Councilor Walters raised that and I finished with my questions. Yes, thank you, Chair. It relates to the framework agreement. I've actually got a copy of the horse and procurement code says the last review date was January 21. This contract went to cabinet in 2021, November. I'm just wondering why we didn't go down the framework route at that time. It was decided that to put it out as a single contract for the in theory advantages of simple one point of contact management, our tree contract is not so huge as to be only attract the really biggest players. Ours is a relatively small contract in other cultural terms. So it didn't preclude some local suppliers from bidding, not just the one that is a national chain, but there were contractors who were one is based in Crawley, one was based in Surrey, a girlfriend somewhere, I think. So there were a number of different sized contractors who bid anyway under that approach. So, and in theory, if you have a good contractor, then a single contract can work perfectly well. I have no doubts about that. And that was the approach that was taken as it was, it was bundled up as one piece of work. But I say, unfortunately, it didn't meet its promises. I'm just trying to make sure I'm understanding it correctly. So it's not really a question. It's more. Can you just check my understanding? So we'll have a framework of the pride suppliers. So we could have a choice of five, for example, and then we could maybe slim that down over time if three are proven better than the other, or is there like guaranteed, a guaranteed amount of work that has to go a certain way? That's kind of, we're right at the early sound, literally having a meeting tomorrow with one of the procurement team to talk it through. And there are different ways we could do it. We could have, if we go down a framework approach, we could have one main contractor and then two or three subsidiary contractors, all we could split it so that all of the larger scale woodland and forestry work goes to one contractor and all of the standard sort of individual tree work goes to another specialist pruning stuff goes to someone else. So, again, there's even different ways of splitting it between how, you know, between the contractors. That's sort of what we're doing at the moment. With our contractors that we are using, we are trying to kind of split it evenly so there can be no argument about, you know, unfair bias, if they do come to bid. But we are trying to play to their strengths are the ones that I've got a lot of big forestry equipment are the ones that have been doing some of the ash dieback work for us over the winter, where we need to take down a block of trees. For example, but there's a horse and based contractors, small family firm, great pruning. So if we've got some technical pruning to do, we're tending to give them that. So that's how it's working at the moment and that is how the framework may operate. I think I think just the other points to just make as well is that we will go through a market engagement process with those sort of local companies, et cetera, because there's no good us putting out something to tender if it doesn't actually meet market requirements. So that is another aspect that we will have to do through this process as well. And then we'll understand those sort of elements, even more than he already does, probably. Thank you, Alan, Councillor Linnell-Lispram. Thank you, Chair. If you do introduce for the interim different contractors to do different elements, are you then not creating more of a problem at a later stage, because then none of those may not be able to bid for the work at a later stage, because they would have a distinct advantage. So your, in effect, you could be forcing yourself towards a single source contract, which does have significant benefits and our risks associated with that, but there are benefits of a single source contract. I think actually the opposite is true. So the reason for this interim solution that we're in actually at the moment, it started as soon as that previous contract failed on the mutual termination kicked in on the 31st of December. So actually one of the reasons for spreading it is that it does allow them to bid, because actually no one of them is favored. So basically, as I say, it spreads that and then not actually being favored by the Council, which therefore does allow them to bid. And we can't take into account the work that they've done up to now. It has to be really transparent in terms of the way that the procurement process is. And the questions that we ask and the answers that they give, it has to be a completely transparent process that is on the online portal that everyone can see. I would just say that I think I'd endorse that you did remarkably well to get out the contract that quick. I would say that was a remarkable piece of work, because this could have lingered on forever and ever. So well done. Thank you. Again, I'm just trying to understand how your framework work. I take it, each contractor will be pre-qualified to do certain types of work. And then you will post the various jobs out for them to bid against, but also take out the ones which are not qualified. Is that how it's going to work? Well, so we haven't decided on the exact way forward. It could be that they may be a main contractor that does the bulk of the work. We could have a separate contractor who does the inspections. So one of the concerns we had last time was that the company doing the tree work was also doing inspections for us. So you could see that there is a risk potentially of generating more work than is strictly necessary. I don't think that actually happened last time. The inspector was very good. But there is a possibility that so you could separate out the inspections to a specialist surveyor. You could do the bulk of the tree work with one firm, and then as I said, you might want to just put particular pieces of work out to other contractors on the framework. So it's that if there was a lot of forestry work to do, for example, somewhere, you need specialist big equipment for that. So you could get that in from one of the other contractors potentially. So that's one arrangement. So you have a primary contractor and then specialist second tier contractors for particular pieces of work. That's the most likely way I think it will go, but as I say, we could look at just splitting it potentially across the kind of, you know, thirds or quarters of approximate work. You know, we can, as I said, right at the start, we can't ever guarantee an exact amount of work, because we never know what's stored is around the corner, but you could sort of divide it into a percentage of the overall work. But yet to be decided with procurement. Okay, so the framework is how it's going to be managed is still very much open on that. Okay, thank you. Any other questions from our council of waters? Sorry, it's more of a statement than a question. Just to let you know about the procurement code 2024's coming to governance in July. Thank you for that heads up. Any further questions or need a clarification on this topic? No, well, I'd like to thank the director and officers. What I would ask is that in summary, when you're done and when you've decided what you're going to do, can you come back to us and let us know, please. And we can ask more questions, possibly or not, in this case, maybe depends what the members want to do. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you. [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] My next item on the agenda is refuse vehicle refurbishment tender award. That's basically for us to look at this, let's come up highlighting problems with the previous contract. I'd point out that if members of the committee or if we go into discussing the exempt appendices, then I will have to suspend, when in parish council call, we call to suspend standing orders, but basically, because it's exempt, we will have to shut down the recording and go into private session. So just a heads up that we may have to do that, okay? So if I could ask the director to present the report. Thank you. So I'll just give a summary of the contract that we entered into. So we awarded the contract through a mini competition on the TPPL framework to refurbish 22 of our RCB's refuse collection vehicles. And this commenced on the 1st of January, 2023, due to run for two years. There were two contractors which showed interest, and it's a successful contractor one, following a scoring on the quality and price. And this scoring was done by our transport manager and workshop supervisor, along with the senior procurement officer and the senior contracts, the board administrator. So the contract had not been performing, meaning vehicles were not being returned on schedule, which has impacted on our revenue budget because it meant we needed to purchase additional parts and higher additional vehicles to cover those that were off the road. Following in-person meetings and promises it to improve from the contractor, this didn't happen. And we therefore took the decision to terminate the contract through a mutual agreement, which was part of the terms in the TPPL contract. We're now seeking to award a new contractor through the framework in order to ensure the remaining vehicles were refurbished to schedule and to an acceptable standard and time scale. We've been to obviously ensure that a robust process in place to have regular updates from the new contractor and to ensure that they have suppliers ready to provide the parts needed as part of the reimbursement process. Thank you. Questions from the floor? Any questions from Councilor Serkis? I could, of course, ask these questions tomorrow, but I might as well ask what one I've got them in mind. I mean, I know that from time to time we do hire sort of on an agency basis, refuse vehicles. I wonder whether the need to hire vehicles on an agency basis has increased, whether the cost has increased. And whether this situation in relation to refurbishment has actually increased the number of times and therefore the cost of hiring refuse freighters on an agency basis. And I suppose as a natural, if the answer that is yes, again, since it looks as if another party with whom the Conference of Council has been doing business hasn't actually come up scratch. How much we would be looking to this former other party to bear some on all of the cost, the extra cost of using agency, if I can call them that agency refuse freighters. So to answer your question, so yes, we had increased the number of higher vehicles we were requiring. That's one of the main reasons we entered into the refurbishment contract in the first place to bring the vehicles back up to spec that are required. And then as part of the fact that the contract didn't, they didn't keep to their time scales, we then needed to hire in some other vehicles to cover that, as well as additional costs. So, and obviously costs of hiring vehicles has gone up in general along with everything else that has escalated. And in your answer to recovering costs incurred, there is, it's because it's part of the framework, there's no financial penalties as part of the call off contract. So the terms of conditions are set by the framework of administrators. These type of contracts are designed to be as it is your alternative so the supply supply is going to be quickly sourced if the current ones aren't working. So therefore there's no associated costs that we can put a financial penalty on unfortunately through the framework. So those are the questions. Council waters. Sorry, I'm being very picky. On the background of information, you've got number five users, the PDAG and the outcome of the consultations. I can only see reference to the SLT and then monitoring officer director resources, nothing in here about the PDAG. Are you able to give us a view of that? So this report was drafted a couple of weeks ago. And in the period since then, two points, the PDAG meets on Wednesday evening. The secondly contract awards don't go to PDAG, that was a council decision. So the report to Cabinet, I think, will take out the PDAG reference because it's not a report that needs to go to PDAG. Thank you for the clarification. Any other questions? No, I'm glad to see the report that we do need to refurbish these vehicles, but the question arises for me. Is if I look in Paragraph 7, 7.1, 7.2, and what it said in those two paragraphs, and what we said earlier on, we've had to hire more of these freighters because of the non-performance on this contract. And yet, it says in Paragraph 7.2, well, I won't read it, but you can read the last sentence in the report. I'm a bit puzzled as to how you're going to end meat about spending more money on hiring vehicles in. And yet, at the same time, it's confident you're not going to spend on the original amount. Can you clarify on that without too much problem? So the budget that we have for refurbishment is through the capital budget. The higher side of that comes out of our revenue budget. So we've got the capital there to refurbish still. But yes, we have spent over spend only on the revenue budget for hire. Well, in my simplistic mind, I mean, basically, yes, okay, you've got a basket of CapEx, and you've got a CapBasket of RevEx for that, I understand that. The question going through my mind is, in the before situation where you had your CapEx A and RevEx B, that gives you a certain amount of money. And in this case now, because we've had so much more hiring vehicles, and you've got, for illustrative purposes, you've got CapEx A is still the same, but now your RevEx is higher. So overall, for the council, this is going to cost us more money, isn't it? And if so, do we know how much? So, yes, do you want to set this down? I'll tell you something, when we set the capital budget, though, we assumed that our refurbishment costs would be a certain amount, and actually they've come in lower than that. So actually our CapEx budget will be lower, aren't they? Which will partly offset, mostly offset, probably the extra revenue costs to the hire. So swings around about is probably going to be about the same amount of money spent. Okay, because it wasn't clear from... Okay, well, thank you for clarifying that. So what you're saying is, before situation and after situation, that net is going to come out in the wash, is what you're saying. Thanks. A specific question that does raise a long-term bell. Basically, you said in the framework agreement, that if I understood what you said correctly, if there is a non-performance, there is no financial comeback. I think is what you said. It immediately made me leap to the previous topic, which we said we're looking at a framework agreement. Is that going to be the same case in that one, or is there a danger of that being the same one? It's not really a question for you, or it's a question for all. Now, when you guys procure, there's a whole bunch of different kinds of framework agreements that are in place. I think what we're talking about with the parks contract is essentially our own in-house framework agreements. So we identified who's on that framework. This was a framework that we went to to buy the contract. And I think the pace of allowing the way this framework works is that, I think we cancelled the contract maybe four, six weeks ago with the current supplier, and we're here, we're at Cabinet in a couple of weeks, to appoint a new supplier. So the pace of decision-making under the framework is benefiting us to allow us to continue service delivery during this calendar year. Okay, thanks for setting my mind at rest, because I immediately made that leap to the previous topic, whether we rightly or wrongly. That's fine. Do any of the members of the committee got any more questions for the officers? No, but thank you both. Oh, sorry. Sorry, Alex. Thank you, Chair. Sorry for my hand up a bit later. It's just really a simple one, really. Are there any other accounts that are going to be pursuing any compensation from the contractor for this? There's already recourse considering the costs involved in having to hire these vehicles and the fact that obviously defects were found with vehicles that were returned in the first place. Thank you. Please go ahead. No, we won't be seeking any financial compensation because it's part of the framework agreement. It's there to be able to terminate quickly and then reassign a new contractor quickly as well. So even though we have had some extra costs, as Dom said, that should hopefully balance out, we're going to have a new contractor in place shortly. Thank you. Just a quick follow-up question on that. Is there any scope for inserting any clause in future contracts that if time scales, especially to the degree that had not been met in this case, is there any scope for including clauses for financial contributions back to the Council? Is there any place that contracts and timelines aren't met for future contracts? Yes, and that varies by contract. So this was a short-term two-year contract to provide, you know, 22 repairs to refuse collection vehicles. You know, the negative side of not allowing compensation to be paid under the terms is probably balanced out by the fact that we're able to act quickly and to cancel the contract and re-precure a new supplier within a very quick timeframe. If we talk about, you know, some of our different, what other contracts? They're higher value, longer term, higher risk to the organization and to the community, and you need compensation measures in those sorts, less so in this one. Thank you. Thank you, Alex. Councilor Woltz, again? Sorry, Megan. Just a point of clarity, really. Again, I've got the procurement code in front of me. Specialists suggest that it goes to PEDA prior to the issue of tenders and cabinet approval following evaluation. Thank you, suggesting it's under that threshold. My understanding is that Council took a decision some time ago that procurement decisions don't go to PEDA, but I don't think it's been updated in that document. No, so we look forward to the new one. It might be a point that we take up with the monitoring officer. Can you make a note, please? We'll take it up a little. Thank you. Any other questions on the committee? No. I'd like to thank Lauren for coming and going through this with us. You are quite welcome to stay, but if you would like to leave, by all means, you're free to go. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is item seven, which is the overview and scrutiny annual report, which is basically you have had a copy of the report. Basically, I'm obliged, Chairman of the Government and Security Committee, once a year, to present Council a report on our activities and also to let the full Council know. That's for noting and let the full Council know what we are up to and what we are doing, which I would try and do anyway, irrespective of this obligation to report an annual basis to Council. But basically, this is a report which I would hope that you will agree that I present this to Council, which is the annual report about what we have been doing for the past year and what we are proposing to do for the future. So any questions, I'll refer them to Bradley who wrote the report, but I've checked it. If there's any points we've missed at this point, it'd be useful because the Council bevers over there in the corner hovering none. Yes, Chairman, just a quick one, really. I was surprised when I read it that we hadn't replaced the two Councillors that we lost during the year, which seemed unusual. I obviously should have picked it up at the time and didn't, but I just wonder why that was. I mean, obviously, if that had kept going through the year, we'd have ended up being in court because we hadn't had any Councillors left, but maybe we want to watch out for this year. I was already conscious of one, well, one could not be there, but we were so close to the end of the year anyway. I think it was fairly close to the, so it was certainly about two or three months before we went to the annual meeting, et cetera. The new year, so to speak, from memory. So can I propose in a second that I take this report to full Council for noting? Councillor Bevis, Councillor Jaffries, thank you. Sorry, Lenny, I'm not a member anymore. Are you still a member? I'm sorry. I thought I thought you'd sat down and swapped with Councillor Perry, or John. There's three on the committee now. Okay, thanks. I assume you were here on a visitor ticket, but that's my mistake. Sorry for that. Item eight is update on task and finish groups. I'm very glad to see that Sam could make it today. If you could just update us briefly, please, Sam. So we've got obviously new people, so we have been looking at whether and how we are providing for teenage girls when it comes to outdoor sports and leisure. And so we've been trying to work with the local colleges to try and look at how our outdoor sports and leisure facilities are perceived. And if they're not perceived well, what we could do to remedy there. So we have created a survey, which is pretty much finished now. And ideally, we add very much like the members of the ONS to have a look at that just to make sure that you're happy with the survey before we start distributing it in the wider community, just to make sure we haven't made any major gaps with it more than anything. So the survey is ready. And we've also got pretty much close to nailing down some dates with the local schools, colliers, and also stunning and the wheeled to have some small focus groups with 17-year-olds just to see what they think and just to see if we could look at different designs and just to speak in more detail with a smaller and more select group. The stumbling block is at the moment, obviously May and June are key exam months. And so just nailing down a date, which is good for all, has just been where the niggles have been, but we're pretty much there at looking at a July date for colliers. And yeah, pardon? And June, hey, yes. Thank you so many questions for some Liz. Thank you, Chairman. I'm all for this. I think it's a very, very good idea. Can you tell me how your surveys get out? Will it be purely on the electronic devices or will it physically go anywhere? We're wanting to use any and all channels to try and get it spread as best as we can amongst those target groups because they're traditionally not the ones that will pick up a canceled email. So we're, again, trying to get physical copies into the colleges and we're working with the communications team to try to get the word out that this is happening. And to also target parents to get them on board at spreading the word, please build this in and get in parents to fill it in too. Yes. Councillor GRUNT. Because I'm new and this is fascinating. Thank you. Can you just briefly let me know, is this just for school age kids, young ladies, or is this also for young ladies who are just entering the workplace and that kind of thing? So in order to make it a manageable and useful study for scrutiny, we narrowed the focus down to look at girls up to the age of 18, younger than 18, in the first instance, because what we're trying to do is think this is often perceived as an overlooked demographic. But similarly, there are other parts of society which feel overlooked and don't feel that our spaces are inclusive. So we're looking first and foremost at that demographic. The issue for the new Councillors is when you've got a task to finish group and you're looking at a topic, the problem is to define it in such a way that you have a doable scope. If I can put it this way, the problem is with these task to finish groups, especially for subject like this one, you can have like creep or gallop to one side and suddenly you end up with a totally unmanageable animal. So you have to be fairly concise and precise as to what you're trying to do, otherwise you just lose control. If you're interested in the topic, I'm sure that Sam would be quite grateful for somebody else to join a task to finish group, because they don't normally task to finish groups about between four and six people to spread a load and Sam can do with some more on a working group. If you're interested, no pressure, but talk to Councillor Bateman and she'll set you straight. Any other questions from anyone? Councillor Trolop. Thank you, Chair. I want to apologise in advance for this question because it's very much a newbie question. From the first part of this meeting, I sort of got the impression we were like overviewing and scrutinising decisions made by the Council or whatever, which is good in these doing, but I don't quite see how this fits into that. I'm not saying it's not worthwhile work and it needs to be done, I'm just curious that it's being done in this committee. Well, basically, when you're looking at governance, there are several tools to governance. One is the audit committee, one is over in scrutiny, of course, and other parts of the Council as well look at the way things are run and the way things are done. But nothing prevents over in scrutiny looking at policy as well and coming up with looking at various topics in the Council that can do with being looked at, that haven't been looked at before, that can be worked on and taken forward as a task and finish group. So it's not only looking at past decisions because that's always looking in the rear view mirror. It's also looking at structures, it's looking at processes and procedures, and it's also looking forward to ideas or policies that could come forward that the incumbent team would not necessarily think of a look at. So it's a wider, it's more holistic approach. And certainly my view on this committee is that we should not always be looking in the rear view mirror, we should be looking forward as well. There's always been a tendency too much to look at, manana and what's happened in the past. And I think it also makes it more interesting for the members of the committee instead of always looking backwards, so get your teeth into something new, or something that's not been thought of. Does that help? Yeah, that's my vision of the way we should go forward. Any questions from Councillor Perry. It's not really a question, just that it sounds really interesting and if you do need more people, then I'd be interested in finding out more. I would love to more people to come and join the task and finish and just get involved. It's not something that's meant to be picking holes, it's trying to make things better. I suppose a slight supplementary is what about the gender neutral issue because there are lots of things going around in exactly that demographic age group that might be important. I think in a nutshell, what you do for women and girls may well be of interest and use and value to people who don't identify within their assigned gender. Well, I'm sure I'm sure that if you wish to join in Councillor Perry, I'm sure that Councillor Bateman will be overjoyed. I'd just like to add a transfer of Bateman that I would love to join as well. I did in my master's program several courses on a hybrid design service. Well, I leave it to sound to players when you've decided what you want to do, just let me know, please. The other task to finish up and running is Councillor Walters, shall I hand over to you, Blender, to give us an update and tell us where you are, please. Yes, thank you, Chair. So this is a lease contract task and finish group, which is looking past, we're going backwards. And what we're doing is we're looking at those contracts which are in place now for commercial, primarily, but we're touching on leisure just to see how big an animal it is. What we're looking at is the terms of each of those contracts, what the market value is for each of those contracts and whether there's a gap. And if there is a gap, who agreed it? We've identified six contracts that we can look at initially, but we do have issues with what's in public domain and what isn't. So I'm just going down the process at the moment, I'm looking at one myself, and then I'm working with this Williams, who's a head of property. So that we can actually make sure that we've got the information that we can put in all the boxes and we do have a framework that we're going to be completing for that. I've just had a very brief meeting with Carole Musgue, who, again, her title escapes me, but she's contracts. My little helper. Okay, so she's the one that does the negotiation with all the contracts, and she uses agents and some she does herself, so she's the ideal person to talk to. We've got a feature meeting planned for the 29th of May. There are six of us involved at the moment, which I think is probably manageable. And in between times I'm going to be talking to Bradley about allocating some of those other contracts between the public domain with some instructions as to how to get the information that we're looking for. I've asked Carole to come to that meeting and give us an overview of her job, what she does and how she does it, so that we can all get that assurance from her. We're on target now. To create the report ready, or at least the preliminary report ready for July, with a view to finishing it in September. Thank you. Any questions for Belinda on that task and the finished groups work? No. So coming back to what was said earlier on, it's not only looking backwards, but it's also looking forward. You've got an example of each now to consider. Thank you, Belinda. And I'm glad to hear that we'll have a draft come forward in July to discuss and look at and just circulate beforehand. Thank you. Next item of the agenda is the work program, which is a general item nine. Basically, you can see the list of the dates for the future meetings on what will come de facto. And in both basic heroes on what some. The forward plan. It does not preclude or stop us looking at other things, but this is basically the bones of what we will be looking forward. In the next meetings. A lot of these, as you can see, are looking backwards, but some of them are not some of the looking forwards as well. So you've got a mixer admittedly in here. It's not strategy forming or policy forming. But it doesn't stop us looking at things and bringing them forward. One example, which is used currently all the time in council, is when the task and finish group with the S one or six funding. The allocation of the funding came up with reporting procedures and those processes, those reports are still used every quarter. By the council, but they've never crossed the minds of the cabinet so the time or the people at the time. So there's an example of something useful that is still in use by council today that overview and scrutiny took. Another one that's coming forward in July. I'm sorry in June would be the parking policy update. A task of fish looked at parking measures in new developments, which has been out and been looked at and consulted to replace the council council measures, which have been deemed by certain members as inadequate. There's another one of looking at policy. Any questions on the item nine? Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. Two issues which have bloomed large in my thinking are not reflected here. I don't think you are reflected in any proposals for our future workers over in scrutiny. One is the proposal to reform the planning committee system and structure, which I've got a feeling isn't going to move forward, but who am I to say that? And also, of course, we've got the major issue of the work on the review of the council's constitution. These don't feature at all in these documents, and yet there are fairly major issues. I also wonder, given that I know, Chairman, like many of us, you feel, as was explained earlier, that really we should be wherever possible looking forward. Do we have any thoughts as to how certainly the review of the constitution can involve at some stage the script committee? So I can just throw that out there, Chairman. Thank you. I mean, I'll take those on a considerate. I mean, I will as chair of all of you and scrutiny be involved in those discussions. It also happens. I think I'm a member of governance as well. So I'll probably report back to the committee with Councillor Walters as well. And it's something I'll think about and discuss with the monitoring officer and Councillor Walters. Do you want to chip in? Yes, because also that's not one. Here's the peer group review and the outcome of that and how that's been adopted within the council. It's going to be part of the constitution review, but I don't know whether you want it separate or it will be part of the program to come forward. So I thought about including this time round, but I've not had really had time to read it any depth. So I thought I'd play for time and bring it to the next one. Wise. It's a truth. And the other points on a general item nine. I'll take those points on the consideration. Council circus and we'll take those forward. And the peer review will be part of our program, but need to read it and understand it first. Thank you. Item 10 is a cabinet forward plan. I take it that members of the committee have looked at them. Any comments or concerns that members of the committee have got on the forward plan? I mean, some of those we've already discussed and you've already seen some of them you might not. And some of those are already, if you look in the plan or item nine, we've already basically pencil them in, for example, in June, the animal welfare policy because I was quite keen to look at that one, or at least understand it better. And transformation fund and productivity plan is another one, which would be interesting. Any questions or comments that you want to raise on this forward program. This is a very slightly, obviously, there's new people. And it's just a slight nitpicky kind of thing. It's just, there's obviously new appointments. So it's just updating it to reflect the new people that are, you know, cabinet members, the green spaces actually. It's not done anymore. It's just tweaking it with those updates. I think I'll just add some, I think a new member here is feeling a bit, oh my gosh, there's much more to this committee than I thought. So, yeah. Well, I would say in response to that is not only for new members, all members as well, we know me, but I mean, for new members, if you've got any questions or any issues or stuff you want to discuss, you know, just feel free either pick up the phone, send me an email. I mean, Friday is a good day for me. Tuesday mornings between about 10 and 11.30 are also good if you want to have a coffee or tea or something somewhere, somewhere between Pearlboro and Horsham. I'm always happy to have a discussion. I'm always happy to try and help, especially new members who don't know what's going on. But it also applies if old members want to talk things through. And I don't mean old in age. I mean, people who've been around the block. I'm always happy to try and help and to discuss things. Well, not necessarily believe that. But it is genuine if you want, you know, talk things through. Anyway, coming back to the Ford program of camera, any comments or issues on that or can we take them as red? I'm going to take them as red. Thank you. On urgent business, basically, it came out that emergency powers had to be used to cover a contract on insurance. So basically, I decided to examine the use of the emergency powers to understand what happened, why and how. If there are any lessons to come of it, this is a bit unusual because it's an emergency needs to be done quickly in a short time frame. But on the other hand, doesn't need lots and lots of meetings. In fact, I think it probably needs one meeting and a summary. I've written it in a way that we could have two, but we don't necessarily have to do that. Effectively, as I said, in this, the use of emergency powers is unusual, but it's a useful tool. The issue was that was a key contract and time was running out and it felt on a bank holiday and it happened at the wrong time. So these are mitigation factors, but are there any lessons here that we could use? Are there any dangers of potentially the same thing happening again for something different in the council? In terms of when there's one person involved who might not be there, what happens for decision making, for example. So it's just ready to understand the internal and external processes. So basically, I'm proposing to head this up. Any questions? And I would like the committee to approve selling up this task and French group. And then, of course, I would like some volunteers to join me in doing this work. Over to you. Chairman, I think it's essential that you do look at this. I mean, there are lots. First, I've read about it today, but to me, there are a lot of questions. What I'm asking here was how is it allowed to get to the situation where it needed emergency cover? When you're working with East Sussex County Council, there are always queries anyway. So I think it should have been spotted a long time ago. And I think one of the questions is how did it get to this point? So I fully support what you're doing. I think it's essential that we understand why it happened. Thank you, Councilor Kitchin. Councilor Garff? I also think it's an important subject to have a look at chair. I'm just curious to know, do we know or we don't know yet if there was a cost implication to the council because of this? Well, we don't know that yet. Thank you. I'll ask the director. He might have a brief answer or review on it. So in summary, no. There are inflationary costs, of course, each year for every contract. And we are, I suppose, having incurred further costs from those sorts of changes. And of course, we vary things within our insurances all the time. So when we get more vehicles, you have to ensure more vehicles. So there will be certain amounts of the volume has increased, but also the price increased due to inflation. So are we much worse off having done this emergency powers? No, we had insurance all the way through. Should we have gone out for a five-year contract? Yes, we should have done. But we've managed to do one year in an emergency situation. Is that detrimental? We won't ever know directly. We'll be able to absolutely compare, but we don't think it's cost us money to do so. Thanks, Tom. I think it was Councillor Campbell. I just wanted to say, I'd like to volunteer to be on the working party. This is the type of thing I do on a daily basis, this sort of exercise. So I think I might add some value. Well, professional help is great for you received. Councillor Bevitz. Thank you, Chairman. I wasn't sure how this decision surfaced. It's improbable, maybe not in public, but certainly within the Council. I don't remember seeing any notification of this, so I'm intrigued. That's fine. So there was a decision that was published, but I think for the detail, I'll hand over to Bradley. Give more detail. Just in terms of notifying the decision. There was a decision that was published, and of the decision that was taken. And it should have received it on your email account. It should have been out to all members. I've just been through my email, I was looking for the word emergency, and I didn't find it. I can come see you afterwards, and I'll make sure. On a more general point, I can't imagine that East Sussex County Council are going to just walk away from this call cap and pretend it didn't happen. I'm sure they'll have a review and try and learn lessons from it, and I'm sure that they will share those lessons with us. I'm just a little bit concerned that we might be duplicating effort unnecessarily. I don't actually think we are duplicating effort because I'm not sure that East Sussex County Council are quite aware of what's happened, but I'll hand over to the Director. Well, first of all, I think we just need to clarify the organisations here. So it's not East Sussex County Council, it's the East Sussex Procurement Hub, and that's two completely different things. The Procurement Hub is run, I think it's led by Wield and its other local authorities, but not the County Council, so just make that absolutely clear. If that's the case, then I'm quite happy with Councillor CLARCHER or suggestion. Besides, which is up to us to scrutinise our own dirty washing rather than somebody else's dirty washing, if I can put the analogy out there. So does the Committee agree that we go forward with this? If so, if you could let Bradley know who's willing to come, I mean, we need about five or six volunteers to work on this. As I said, I see this being one, possibly two meetings are the most, but there might be two, two and a half or two hours or something each. If you could let Bradley know, I mean, I've got a number of hands here, Bradley, so you can lock them down, and then we'll get back in touch with you with a date or several dates. As to when we can meet up and do this, okay? Everybody agreed? I'd like to thank you all very much. Thank you. I have no other urgent business, and with that, I'll draw the meeting to a close, and thank you for coming. [BLANK_AUDIO] [ Silence ]