A member of Dundee City Council has written to its chief executive asking why a public consultation wasn’t held after it was decided not to provide a swimming pool at the £100m East End campus.
West End Liberal Democrat councillor, Fraser Macpherson, shared the letter after he said he’d mail Gregory Colgan, during a scrutiny committee session on Wednesday.
Mr Macpherson said he has received an apology from Mr Colgan and that a further written response will be sent.
He also said the tender process in council contracts lacks transparency.
Wednesday’s meeting focused on questions remaining following scandals involving a £4m contract to supply smoke alarms gained by Edmundson Electrical.
This resulted in two former council employees going to Spain on a luxury golfing “customer event”, paid for by the firm.
On Thursday, Mr Macpherson said: “There is a crying need for council tender reports to be more transparent in terms of evidencing best value for the Dundee public.”
At a policy and resources committee meeting on March 27th on the £100m contract for the East End campus, he said: “Nowhere in that report do we have for public consumption, anything to evidence the fact that this is competitively tendered.”
‘Why community not consulted?’
In his mail to Mr Colgan, Mr Macpherson wrote: “My question was simply why, given that at some stage in the process, the administration group, project board or officers determined that a swimming pool would not be provided, the community was not consulted on that decision?
“This causes me considerable concern.
I would be grateful for my question to now finally be answered.”
On the broader issue of lack of transparency in tender contracts, Mr Macpherson said Thursday: “I have lost count of the number of times I have had to raise this at council committees but this week, and on the back of the report on the smoke alarms reputational disaster for the council, I have finally got assurances about the timescales for better reporting of tender information.”
On the Edmundson Electrical contract, Mr Macpherson questioned not only the transparency around that agreement, but more broadly, how much information the public are given by the council on the details of other multi-million pound deals.
He said at Wednesday’s meeting: “We did not get best value in relation to this particular project.”
He added that the 2019 committee report about the contract states it was: “Negotiated in accordance with council procurement procedures that provides best value.”
Mr Macpherson says detail is lacking, such as comparison with other tenders, to show how “best value” was met.
“It’s quite worrying, how we present (tender reports),” he said.
He continued that if there are “lessons to be learned” from “the whole Edmundson Electrical fiasco”, it should be that there is “the fullest information to evidence best value”.
Additionally, he said, committee conveners should be “prepared to let elected members question that and ensure that everything that should be included in a tender is in a tender.”
