Conservative councillor Mark Flewitt hit out at the Labour, Liberal Democrat and independent administration in charge of the local authority and called on Cory to appeal the decision.
Southend-on-Sea borough council is currently seeking to re-tender its collection contract for a period of up to 17 years, with the deal estimated to have a value of between £100-150 million.
Cory Environmental, which has carried out waste and recycling collections in Southend since 1990, failed to be shortlisted for the second round of the procurement for the deal, and will end its long term relationship with the council when the new contract begins in October 2015 (see letsrecycle.com story).
Procurement
The London-based firm was one of three which lost out during the first pre-qualification stage of the tender, alongside Serco and Urbaser. Still in the running for the contract are: Amey, Biffa, SITA UK and Veolia.
Commenting on the council’s decision, councillor Flewitt argued there was a ‘lack of transparency’ on how the decision to reject Cory’s bid had been reached, claiming that ‘no elected councillors’ had been present at the time.
He said: “It was a perverse decision. We don’t know why they [Cory] have been dropped, we would have put them back into the procurement process to test them out one more time.
“Unless Cory challenges this decision we are not going to find out how this decision was made, and it will not be referred to the council’s waste management working party.”
Responding to the criticism, Martin Terry, Southend’s Executive Councillor for Public Protection, Waste and Transport, said that the tender process had been carried out in accordance with procurement rules and that it had been done in a ‘transparent, open and fair’.
He said: “The procurement process for this contract fully complies with the council’s contract procedure rules and relevant EU directives and is being undertaken in accordance with the formal delegations agreed by the council. This ensures a transparent, open and fair process is undertaken.
“The shortlisting of potential service providers was determined by means of a pre-qualifying questionnaire. This technical assessment was carried out in the usual way by officers with specialist knowledge in the field. This process was set up by the council’s previous Conservative administration and has not been changed by the new administration.”
Contract
A spokesman for Cory told letsrecycle.com the firm was ‘disappointed’ not to have progressed to the next stage of the tender, but said that it will work with the local authority to ensure that it provides a ‘high standard’ of service up to the end of the existing contract.
He said: “Having worked in Southend for 20 years we are disappointed not to have progressed to the next stage of the competitive tendering process.
“We will however continue to work with Southend council to provide a high standard of service to Southend residents and aim to increase recycling rates further during the final 13 months of our contract period.”
Transition
The failure to renew its Southend contract comes at a transitional time for Cory, which carries out waste collections for over 720,000 people across England and remains one of the UK’s larger waste management companies.
The loss will also be a blow to Nicola Peake who, it is understood, in May 2014 joined Cory as director of municipal services, having previously served as Kier’s head of environmental business from February 2012 to March 2014 (see letsrecycle.com story).
Cory, which is owned by investment funds, said it had no comments to make on Nicola Peake’s appointment to the firm.
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