Tenders and good practice

Question

Our Clerk sent out 3 Tender pack/request for Our town council website to be updated to comply with the new (EU Reg ?) L09-18  Accessibility Regulations 2018. (Taken on trust that they were sent).  Only 1 respondent  from the 3 sent returned  a price that when checked independently by me seems a little high, the quote is (£2900 + annual cost £200) my cursory quote was  £600 (But no detail spec was given by me).
The only Contractor was given a 100/100 Evaluation on the agenda.

I challenged that as the date for compliance  was no Later the Sep 2020. We should looked further afield and obtain at least 1 other quote...just to make sure. A further complication is/was that the only tender received was our Current website provider for another commercial website we use for our building.

To compound the problem even further the owner of that company lives next door to the town clerk. In the meeting that agreed the tender by vote of 4 to,1 no mention or potential conflict of interest was declared although a statement was made that it was "so convenient to have next door, the company that is tasked with the work."...,...So helpful advice please..... is this normal to get only 1 tender response  and accept it !!! or work a little harder to get the best value for money for the council tax payers.

Answer 1

Paragraph 11.1h of the model Financial Regulations states:-

"where the value is below £3,000 and above £100 the Clerk or RFO shall strive to obtain 3 estimates." A formal tendering process is not required and would deter providers from quoting, due to the amount of work required and the low likelihood of securing the contract.

There are a number of specialist providers of parish council websites and a Google search will find them. I've just looked at one example offering sites from £399 to £699, depending on scale and complexity.  If you already have a website and are seeking only minor modification, you could approach a small local web design business to do this for you.

For a service such as this, where the provider does not need to be local, the lack of competitive quotes/estimates is not an acceptable excuse for committing to an over-priced quote.

Answer 2

As indicated, at least 3 tenders should be sought. However, this raises a wider issue if the competence and the Clerk know what to ask for and understand what they may get.  The most important thing is how the content is updated.  There is no use having a shiny glossy website if  nobody in  the council knows how to update it.  So a competent clerk should ask for a content management system to be included. Or  committ to undertake training to use an html editing package.  If the CMS is a free one, they should ensure they are not being asked to pay for it or pay to maintain it.