Hengrove Park was a 76 acre patch of open ground. Originally Whitchurch Airport, it was given over to public use in the early sixties. Now, it is a mixed-use development. I wrote about it last year, when the budget rose unexpectedly by £5 million:
The Council are the owner of the huge swathe of open land at Hengrove Park, and along with the South West Regional Development Agency, have been putting together a huge plan to monetise that asset. Phase 1 includes a Community Hospital (not quite a proper hospital), the Healthplex (a swimming pool), the South Bristol Skills Academy (not quite a further education college) and a European Headquarters for Australian share-register Computershare. You can see the document from this time last year [2007] proposing the land sale.
The plan is terribly clever. Using a mix of borrowed money, private finance initiative funding and multiple development partners the council propose to “regenerate” an area of South Bristol with the mixed-use Phase 1 described above followed by 1200 new houses. Or possibly 690 houses, or indeed none; Phase 2 requires central government to find a large quantity of cash which they demonstrably do not have.
Unfortunately cleverness is not enough to overcome the poor state of the British Economy. Because the project relies on such a complicated web of partner organisations and financial funding sources, it is extremely important to all concerned that it maintains momentum; were it to be delayed for even a few months the whole deal could unravel, since any money brought to the project from the public sector (i.e. taxpayers’ money) is certainly being borrowed unsustainably, and might disappear like faerie gold.
Bristol City Council is set to pay out £800,000 to settle a dispute with a company that wanted to build the new £21-million leisure centre at Hengrove Park.
Surrey-based D C Leisure Management (DCLM) did not succeed in winning the contract to build the complex.
But the company has threatened to sue the council over the way the tendering process was handled. And rather than face a drawn out and potentially costly legal battle the city council are expected next week to offer the £800,000 settlement.
I have also previously written about the dark art of public procurement, and so it is no surprise that the competing demands of legislatory compliance and funding imperatives have resulted in problems. i.e. “We better build this thing fast before the money gets yanked by Whitehall; oh no, we’ve bolloxed up the procurement.”
It might at first reading appear to be a shake-down of the Council by a sly private operator, but in fact DC Leisure Management might have a basis for a legal challenge. In public procurement, the essence of the compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) philosophy is to ensure that everything is fair and open; particularly because responding to a tender is expensive.
The argument of DCLM (interpreted second hand) appears to be that the works that the winning bidder have carried out for Hengrove Park are substantially different than the the works requested in the tender. Thus, the tender was not carried out according to the rules, and they ought to get some money back to cover their tendering costs (reported as £1.3m).
There is no way to establish who is in the right on this matter, as it has all been solved out of court with a payment equivalent to about £4 from each Bristolian tax payer. So that presumably is the end of that.
But it does stick in one’s craw a bit. In my professional life, if I made an error that cost a client a big wedge of cash I could be sued personally, since I’m a member of a professional society (ish) and I maintain professional liability insurance sufficient to cover multi-million pound losses. (No claims yet!)
Will there be any repercussions for those Council Officers who administered this tender process? Who ran the tender? And if they are not to blame, who is? There are hundreds of £10m+ tenders carried out in the public sector every year in which the failed bidders are not given a refund.
One could argue – as it appears the current administration have – that it is better to pay this money now to prevent project delay, but then again last year the Sports Centre was due to open in April 2010, whereas this year it is due to open in the Autumn of 2011 (I love seasonal dates; very forgiving). The Pool/Sports Centre is already over a year delayed; if the council’s case was that strong, why did they not refer DCLM to the reply given to the plaintiff in the seminal case of Arkell vs Pressdram?
A call-in of the Municipal Waste Strategy. Uncertainty remains high about the economics of dealing with waste in the city, driven in part by the arbitrary imposition of Landfill Taxation combined with the mutually exclusive target of reducing carbon emmissions. The decision to take the big-ticket approach of building a large incinerator is still heavily influence by the promise of PFI money (see "Baiting the Hook")
6. It is proposed within CYPS to make a functional separation between an Enabler Core and a series of Business Units to deliver outcomes derived from CYPS Plan Priorities.
7. The Enabler Core will be the necessary economic minimum of person power, consistent with effective capacity, to specify, commission, manage and evaluate the delivery of improved outcomes for Bristol children and young people. The Enabler Core, as Commissioner, could commission services from other organisations (e.g., Extended Schools, the Voluntary Sector),where they are better placed to deliver.
I'll be damned If I know what that lot means, but it sounds expensive. We are reminded that "[t]he Council's Business Transformation Programme is under review with the assistance of consultants, KPMG." which fills me with a deep and abiding sense of dread.
The Cabinet discussed the Capital Programme, of which more to follow. Total costs over the next three years: £356,608,000.00
A bit of drilling down into the Transport Capital Programme also took place. Interestingly this lists work on the controversial plans to repurpose the Bristol-Bath Railway Path as starting in mid-2008. Total bill averages £11,131,000.00 every year for the next five years.
The Officer responsible for PTSD reported on "Non-Conventional Passenger Transport Review: Next Steps", of which an example is shown at the top of this article. You may be unsurprised to know that - as above - this is local authority code for changing from in-house service provision to buying services on the open market, with a few extra twists (PTSD call it "externalisation"). Although Bristol does not technically have a transport authority or a publicly-owned bus or train company, the authority does have a statutory duty to
"secure the provision of public passenger transport services as the council considers it appropriate to meet any public transport requirements otherwise not being met”.
This is taken to mean subsidising First Great Western to deliver economically unviable services on the grounds of "social need", along with a few other obligations like school buses, vehicles associated with day care centres and health care provision. This all costs £9,000,000 every year. If you fancy a laugh, read paragraph 25 - the Equalities Impact Assessment.
And last but not least, a discussion took place of the "Hengrove Park Phase 1 Delivery" a £28,100,000.00 capital programme, for which an extra £5,000,000 will be required from Bristolian tax payers (£2,500,000 beyond the previous budget, and £2,500.000 just in case). I'm still awaiting delivery of a long pole with which to touch the project documentation, but from a distance this is the one that gives me the most pause for thought. Hengrove is not a deprived area, but the neighbouring ward of Hartwood, Fillwood and Whitchurch Park (although not Knowle, interestingly) have issues.
The Council are the owner of the huge swathe of open land at Hengrove Park (around 750,000 square metres), and along with the South West Regional Development Agency, have been putting together a huge plan to monetise that asset. Phase 1 includes a Community Hospital (not quite a proper hospital), the Healthplex (a swimming pool), the South Bristol Skills Academy (not quite a further education college) and a European Headquarters for Australian share-register Computershare. You can see the document from this time last year proposing the land sale, at which the canny Ozzies indicated they were:
i. Identifying opportunities for alternative new or existing premises in the Bristol area. [OR]
ii. Considering moving the operation out of the Bristol area.
1400 jobs (60% residents of Bristol) are associated with the current Computershare Bedminister Down site making them one of the largest single employers in South Bristol so when it came to negotiations, of course it was the local council that blinked first. No doubt Computershare are happy with the deal they got, and good for them.
One of the other partners that doesn't get mentioned this time round is vinter/cider-maker Constellation. They also approached the council with a desire to "facilitate keeping the operation in Bristol", which resulted in a three-way deal in which they Constellation sold their land in Hengrove (Whitchurch Park) to SWRDA, and leased it back until development of Constellation's new site in Avonmouth was completed. The Council provided the financial indemnity, agreeing to cover SWRDA's debts if the deal unravelled. No doubt, as with Computershare, Constellation were delighted with their deal, and good for them: aggressive negotiation is the hallmark of a company making best use of its shareholders capital.
More to follow if I can drum up the enthusiasm to watch the full web-cast. I imagine there was a lot of Railway Path commentary in the public forum.
