Under what conditions can a PC authorise work without competitive quotations

Question

Our PC initially appointed, without obtaining competitive quotations, an architect in 2011 at £60 per hour to carry out design of a new village hall up to planning approval receipt. This cost circa £7000.

After this they appointed this architect to continue work on the project.

In October 2012,  the PC decided to seek competitive bids for this continued work.

We know that the architect, employed by the PC, already worked for the Vice Chair of the PC.

We are unhappy with this situation. What redress do we have? Are we able to question this decision since we suspect that we have not recieved "Value for Money".

 

Peter

Answer 1

A council is under an obligation to obtain good commercial terms and to exclude personal considerations from decisions.

What counts as good commercial terms can be subjective, since it is not only price that affects value for money.  Whether quotes should be sought depends on the financial standing orders of the council, if there are any.  For an amount of £7,000 quotations would normally be sought.  However, this is not always practical, and does depend on their being a number of suitable providers available.

Having been a client of the architect is not necessarily a bad thing - having had personal experience of the standard of work provided could  be an advantage.

You can certainly question the council about the matter.  If you feel that you have exhausted the possibilities of questioning the council, then you could raise the matter with the auditors.