Agenda and minutes

To receive any Declarations of Interest from Members.

There were no declarations of interest received.

To consider any items called-in by the requisite number of Members following the previous Executive meeting.

The Commission considered a report concerning the Call in item EX2582 – Healthwatch Commissioning, which was presented for consideration at a meeting of the Executive on 17 January 2013.

Councillor Jeff Brooks presented the reasons for calling in this item. Councillor Brooks commented that whilst it was expected that due process had been followed in arriving at the recommendations in the report, this information had not been presented to the Executive. The paucity of information meant that he did not believe the Executive had been able to make a fully informed decision on the matter. Councillor Brooks believed that information had been available that could have demonstrated the process undertaken and provided relevant information to the Executive to support their decision but had been omitted from the report. Councillor Brooks remarked that the Executive should be presented with sufficient information regarding the process and the outcome to enable them to reach a robust decision. There was a desire to see further information in relation to this item, for example an explanation of how any submitted bids would be reviewed, and who by, and what service levels would be set, etc. In addition, Councillor Brooks explained to the Commission that Appendix B had not been included in the report.

Councillor Brooks further commented that several points had been repeated a number of times through the report.

June Graves advised that the process undertaken had been robust and information was available as suggested.

Mike Sullivan provided an explanation of the Council’s processes with regard to tendering. He explained that the default position for the Council was to operate a ‘restricted procedure’ whereby, following the advertisement of a contract notice, any expressions of interest received would be filtered using a published evaluation methodology and only selected suppliers would be invited to submit a tender.

Mike Sullivan went on to explain that in the case of Healthwatch commissioning, it had been anticipated that competition would be low, and therefore an ‘open procedure’ was employed whereby all interested suppliers were able to submit a tender with no pre-filtering. A risk associated with the ‘open procedure’ was that many tenders might be required to be evaluated, however in this case just three were received.

Councillor Dominic Boeck asked how often the ‘open procedure’ had been used. Mike Sullivan responded that it was used infrequently; in the past year it had been used twice relating to the procurement of local bus services, and for this procurement.. He added that it required the permission of the Head of Finance and the Head of Legal Services to instigate and that the ‘Open Procedure’  was a well established procurement process..

Councillor Brooks asked for further information about how the process had been advertised. Mike Sullivan replied that the advert had been issued via the Council’s procurement portal on 29^th October 2012, and additional work had been undertaken to inform potentially interested parties. He confirmed that the advert was available outside West Berkshire.

The Chairman requested information regarding the relationship  ...  view the full minutes text for item 87.