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by political editor Paul Francis

Contracts worth more than £4m were awarded by Kent County Council without going through a tendering process designed to get value for money, we can reveal.

A total of 24 contracts, worth £4.2m to companies and consultants, were awarded in the last two years using exemptions allowed under the authority’s procurement rules.

contracts

question: how can kcc be confident that where contracts are awarded without competition, it is getting value for money?

kcc will always endeavour to achieve best value by going to the market place.

in exceptional circumstances, we will either not use the lowest bid because it does not reflect the best value offer taking into account quality measures as well as price, or in even more exceptional circumstances where there is only one supplier that can deliver the goods or services we require, or we need to extend an existing contract to allow time to carry out a procurement process.

the number of contracts recorded against the above criteria were 2009 0.15%, 2010 0.26% and 2011 to date this year, 0.07%.

question: if only one contractor is considered suitable, don’t they have the ability to effectively name a price?

if we are only approaching one supplier, we would use a number of tactics to ensure we still got best value, firstly where possible not letting them know they were the only bidder, insisting on transparency and detailed cost breakdowns so we could analyse the offering to ensure we would not be overcharged and by benchmarking across other similar offerings within kent or in other councils.

They included four awarded to consultants worth £207,000.

A number of other companies were offered extensions on contracts they already ran without having to compete for them. These included £350,000 paid to Ten Alps, the company that ran Kent TV, the authority’s controversial internet TV station.

In another, a health trust was paid £202,000 for a three-month extension to its existing contract after the authority decided there was not enough time to re-tender the work.

A contract worth £247,000 was given to Action for Children to operate the Folkestone Early Year’s Children’s Centre after the council overlooked the fact that it was drawing to a close. The company was already running the service but was offered an extension on the grounds it was experienced, achieved high standards and had "high levels of engagement with the local community."

No competition was involved when KCC awarded a contract worth £403,500 to KCA (UK) to trial a new way of treating patients in Gravesham and Swale.

Under the county council’s competition rules, which are designed to ensure value for money, tenders must be invited for any contract valued at more than £50,000.

Its code of practice issued to staff states: "The council’s preferred and thus default position is that competition is requried for all purchases. As a consequence, occasions where competition can be avoided must be treated as exceptions."

However, the code also permits competition to be bypassed where the work is urgent; is needed because it relates to the council’s statutory obligations to provide services and where senior council chiefs decide there are special circumstances.

KCC said that given the £850m it spent procuring contracts for services each year, the sums were modest but acknowledged everything needed to be done to get good value.

Cllr John Simmonds, KCC’s cabinet member for finance, said: "It is inevitable in an organisation of this size that there will be occasions when, for whatever reason, something has to be done within a certain timeframe. When you look at the amount of money we spend, it is important that we look at the challenging environment we are in."

You can read the full list of contracts and KCC’s explanation for each on Paul’s blog:http://blogs.kentonline.co.uk/author/Paul%20Francis.aspx