This decision was delegated to officers under Part 4.4 of the Council’s Constitution: all executive functions except those in Part 4.5, 4.6 and 4.7 are delegated to the officers in the senior management structure.

To award a contract to carry out a strategic review of the Council’s Housing Revenue Account to Ark Consultancy, by way of delegated decision by the Head of Service due to fewer than the requisite number of quotations being received, and the value of the contract being below £100,000.

The Council received two written quotes/proposals for the work. Both came in above £25,000. The bids were evaluated using the same evaluation tool. The award (subject to contact) has been awarded to the highest scoring provider.  As it was believed that the contracted work would cost between £10,000 and £25,000, the procurement process chosen was to seek at least two written quotes.  The appointed provider can now start the review of the Council’s Housing Revenue Account, which is needed to inform the budget setting process as well as the refresh of the Council’s HRA Business Plan.

Instead of the contract award being delegated to Head of Housing, the procurement portal could have been used to seek further bids. We believe this would have resulted in the same providers bidding for the work, for the same cost. However, this would have caused a significant time delay and bearing in mind the very tight deadlines for this work to be completed, this is was not a feasible option.

Decision taken by Nerys Parry, Head of Housing Services in consultation with Stephen Gabriel, Executive Director (Communities and People) and Nigel Kennedy, Head of Financial Services.