UK contractor expresses anger as agreed contract is sent for re-tender.
Brown & Mason has reacted angrily as the contract it had won to demolish the former Westcliffe Hospital in Staffordshire is to be re-tendered following an ongoing internal investigation into how council contracts are awarded.
Stoke-on-Trent City Council officers are recommending the authority asks for new bids after it emerged lower tenders were overlooked.
The report to the cabinet recommends that the deal to flatten Westcliffe is retendered after a quote of just over £309,000 was dismissed. London-based contractor Brown & Mason had been identified as the preferred bidder out of seven short-listed firms, despite quoting a price of £1.1 million, which was three times higher than that of a rival.
But Terry Brown, managing director of Brown and Mason, said his firm would not reapply.
He said: “We won’t be bidding again. How can we? We have spent a lot of time pricing up the job and now everybody in the country knows our price. I was assured on the phone dozens of times that the work was ours. We started working on it last Christmas – I have wasted a year on this job. The council should stick to their own rules.”
Read more here.
