At the District Councils Executive meeting in November it was decided, after much public pressure, to postpone any decisions on closing the public toilets within the District until January. The January meeting is planned for the 11th of this month and the Agenda can be seen here.
As can be seen from the Agenda the toilets are to be discussed under item 12, The Future Provision of Public Conveniences. However the most interesting thing to note about this is the exclusion of the Press and Public at item 11 meaning the decision will not be reported and Councillors will not be able to talk about the outcome.
This would seem to be an abuse of the system, if the first proposal could be discussed in public why not the second? Is it down to an executive running scared of the opposition?
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Hardly Cllr Mr Hoy, as you should now be aware, it is standard procedure when councils discuss commercially sensitive finance matters pertaining to contracts with contractors providing an outsourced service to them, that they do so in ‘Private & Confidential’ recess.
Apologies for the delay in putting you post up Cllr Seagers.
We assume it was an error when the original proposal came forward in public at the Executive then.
Cllr Mr Hoy
And just when do you think the financial matters relating to the contractual arrangements for ‘the proposal’ were first discussed?
You really should be getting a grip on standard procedure for councils’ discussions of their outsourcing contracts to be held in P&C by now. Or do you believe in letting potential future tenderers know what price and terms that their rivals have bid? Doesn’t sound to me as a likely route to obtaining best value!
Cllr Seagers
At point 6.1 In the report, to the Executive, held in public, on the 9th November 2011 it quite clearly states the price of the contract as £74,600 (see the report here http://cmis.rochford.gov.uk/CMISWebPublic/Binary.ashx?Document=18001 ). I would say that this clearly reveals the price of the contract to future tenderers.