Letter to Brent councillors from Martin Francis, Chair of Brent and Harrow Palestine Solidarity Campaign:
On October 14th the Brent
Executive will be deciding whether to accept an officers’
recommendation to award the Public Realm Contract (waste collection,
recycling, street sweeping, fly tipping, parks maintenance, grounds
maintenance for BHP, burials, gritting) to Veolia.
http://democracy.brent.gov.uk/documents/s19639/en-public-realm.pdf
I am writing to you to set out the
reasons why I think you should use your influence to persuade the
Brent Executive NOT to award the contract to Veolia.
BACKGROUND
Veolia was the only one of the final
three bidders left after one company withdrew because of internal
reorganisation and resource issues (SERCO) and another (ENTERPRISE)
after officers refused them extra time to prepare their bid.
It is clearly legitimate to ask if
‘Best Value’ has been obtained when such a large contract is
awarded with no competitive bid to evaluate it against. It is also
legitimate to ask why Enterprise was not granted more time.
(Enterprise has now been taken over by Amey)
Although Veolia promise improved
performance they have failed to meet recent recycling and residual
waste targets costing the Council £226,000.
http://www.wembleymatters.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/brent-recycling-and-library-visit-rates.html
VEOLIA AND GRAVE MISCONDUCT
Brent and Harrow Palestine Campaign and
Bin Veolia in Brent have called for Brent Council to exclude Veolia
from the contract because of its activities in the Occupied Territory
of Palestine which provide infrastructure supporting the illegal
Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.
The campaign write to the panel giving
detailed information on the background to Veolia’s activities and
legal opinion on the case for exclusion. We asked to meet with the
panel to present our concerns and answer any questions but were
refused. The West London Waste Authority had granted such a meeting
during their procurement process. That meeting took place in a
cooperative and amicable atmosphere.
The Brent panel decided that there were
no grounds for excluding Veolia but would not give their reasons.
Muhammed Butt arranged for a group of campaigners and our legal
representative to meet with Fiona Ledden (Head of Legal and
Procurement) about the issues we had raised. She listened but would
not elaborate on the reasons for the panel’s decision. Our legal
representative, Daniel Machover, responded that this left us trying
to address issues that the Council would not reveal. We were left
with trying to guess what their legal advice had been. He pointed out
that this might leave the Council vulnerable to a Judicial Review.
Fiona Ledden said that she was
determined that the procurement decision would be made on legal
grounds and not political grounds.
Further correspondence and Freedom of
Information requests failed to elicit any information on the content
of the Council’s legal advice, although ours had always been made
public.
We did establish that Veolia had never
been questioned by the panel, or asked to provide additional
information, on the evidence that we had presented about their grave
misconduct.
PUTTING SUCH EVIDENCE TO THE BIDDER AND
SEEKING THEIR RESPONSE WOULD SEEM TO BE ESSENTIAL IN A ROBUST
PROCUREMENT PROCESS AND IN ORDER TO PROTECT THE COUNCIL’S
REPUTATION.
Despite not questioning Veolia,
eventually the Council received an unsolicited letter, apparently out
of the blue, from Veolia attempting to refute claims made against
them.
We were able to provide evidence that
Veolia’s letter was misleading and inaccurate but again this made
no impact on the panel. Our requests for details of the further
legal opinion received by the Council was again refused.
Our campaign has been supported in
motions passed by the Hampstead and Kilburn Labour Party General
Committee, the Brent Central Labour Party General Committee, Brent
Trade Union Council and by Brent members of Jews for Justice for
Palestinians.
We presented a petition with more than
2,000 signatures to the August 19th Executive. Rather than
this being addressed by the lead member for the environment Cllr
Mashari Roxanne, it was referred to Fiona Ledden, head of
procurement, the officer who had been refusing us information.
We have received no response from
either Muhammed Butt or Fiona Ledden to our request for the result of
that referral. It appears that the petition has been put on the back
burner.
I do not think that any Brent
councillor can claim that the above process and officer’s response
was open and transparent. Indeed it appears that residents’
legitimate concerns have been ignored and dismissed.
On all of the above grounds we ask that
you urge the members of the Brent Executive to vote against the
officers’ recommendation.
Yours sincerely,
Martin Francis
Chair, Brent and Harrow Palestine
Solidarity Campaign
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