Issue details

Decision type: Key

Reason Key: Letting/Re-Letting of Contracts of value >£100,000;

Decision status: Recommendations Approved

Notice of proposed decision first published: 17/03/2023

This decision will be taken under urgency procedures.

Reason for urgency:
The Council's Water Supply Contract expires at the end of March 2023. As with gas and electricity, we use a specialist procurement framework LASER managed by Kent County Council (LASER - Local Authority South East Region) for our water contract. We do not have this expertise inhouse.
LASER have suggested we extend our current contract for 12 months under the existing framework and look to collate all our requirements into a mini competition with the current framework suppliers later this calendar year. The annual value of our water supply is approximately £196,000 pa. The majority of the water wholesale price is set by Ofwat . The "competitive" part is less than 5% of this contract value.The advice from LASER is to renew our existing contract and then plan the internal resource/capacity to review the existing contract and request LASER to complete a competitive tendering exercise for us from the framework providers.This process takes 16 weeks and therefore an extension is necessary.

Decision due: Not before 17th Mar 2023 by Director for Place

Lead director: Director for Place

Consultation process