Transfer station costs soar by 37% in 18 months

EXCLUSIVE by DOUG COLLIE

The waste transfer station which Scottish Borders Council has been forced to build as a 'holding base' for the region's domestic rubbish is now set to cost taxpayers £5.5 million instead of the £4 million figure used in a contract notice in December 2016.

A Freedom of Information request has revealed that the council decided in February this year to award the job of constructing the waste transfer station (WTS) to its own in-house team called SBC Contracts without inviting rival bids from private firms.

The decision is perfectly legal under Scottish procurement law, but experts claim it is difficult to guarantee 'best value' for council taxpayers when multi-million pound contracts are not opened up to competition.

The WTS will be developed at Easter Langlee, Galashiels, where a £23 million waste treatment plant capable of dealing with 40,000 tonnes of garbage each year should have been up and running by now.

However, that project which SBC awarded to debt-ridden waste management firm New Earth Solutions, collapsed in disarray in 2015 when the deal had to be scrapped, but not before £2.4 million of public money was spent by the local authority for no return.

With the Easter Langlee landfill site due to be closed in 2019 SBC faced a major challenge on the waste management front. It has been decided to transport all of the region's rubbish to a treatment facility outwith the area, hence the requirement for the WTS.

A news release from SBC last month confirmed that construction work had started at Easter Langlee following improvements to minor roads leading to the site. But the fact that the contract had been handed to SBC Contracts six months earlier was not mentioned.

SBC originally posted a notice on the Public Contracts Scotland website in December 2016 inviting bids for the WTS project, estimated at £4 million.

The notice warned that the site for the station was on land used as a landfill site in the 1970s and would require "careful remediation". The development would include provision for a waste transfer block, administration building, operational yard and entrance and exit roads.

The job was to take nine months to complete, according to the notice, and bidders were given until May 2017 to submit tenders.

But when May came round SBC published another notice, indicating that the procurement process had been abandoned. It stated: "The contract is not awarded. Other reasons (discontinuation of procedure).

Now the FOI response from the council says the WTS will cost £5.5 million with the contract due for completion in April 2019.

A procurement specialist commented: "SBC can award this contract to SBC contracts and do not need to go out to tender.

"However, the question as to whether this is best value appears to be up for debate. If SBC originally thought the transfer station could be constructed for £4m but ended up paying 37% more I would question the capability of the in house team, unless some special circumstances arise."