Veolia Fiasco: What a Waste.

No they didn’t see it. Yes they should have seen it, but it was for some inexplicable reason withheld from them.

How do the Councillors who sit on the Task & Finish Group; which was set up in July, and has so far has had three meetings on the following dates

07/07/21 Task and Finish Group – Waste Contract Inquiry

26/07/21 Task and Finish Group – Waste Contract Inquiry

04/08/21 Task and Finish Group – Waste Contract Inquiry

talk about the Veolia Fiasco when they didn’t have sight of the contract?

How could you inquire or even scrutinize something when you’ve not had sight of the contract?

And yet lo and behold they have come up with a set of recommendations regarding the Veolia Kerbside Waste Fiasco.

07/09/21 – Recommendations arising from review of the waste and street cleansing contract

So for the sake of transparency and openness the Shepway Vox Team place the contract Folkestone & Hythe District Council have with Veolia for all to see.

Veolia & F&HDC Waste Collection Contract

Now of course, the Council simply wouldn’t put the whole contract into the public domain and you’ll see they’ve withheld some of the schedules due to the information being “commercially sensitive” and other parts have been redacted, due to them potentially giving away Veolia’s financial model.

So what parts of the near £40 million pound contract that Veolia has with Folkestone & Hythe District Council are deemed to be “commercially sensitive“?

Well we can tell you:

Clause 24 (Insurance) – values only

All method statements and Veolia created operational know how and methodology.

Service Delivery Plans – in their entirety.

Schedule 3 (Payment Mechanism) and Schedule 4 (Performance Mechanism) – all numbers, figures and percentages in the Schedule and the Annex to the Schedule.

Information relating to the costing mechanisms of the Contractor or any subcontractor, including profit margins, overheads, overhead and profit element, preliminaries and payment terms

The Contractor’s bid together with correspondence and clarifications arising during the bid process and other documents concerning negotiations between the Councils and the Contractor prior to the Commencement date.

Now much of what the Cllrs needed to see is hidden away in the Service Delivery Plan and the performance mechanism, so the reccomendations, as useful as some might believe them to be are not informed by the contract and as such takes no account of any clauses within the contract whatsoever.

The Inquiry by the Task & Finish Group into the Veolia Waste Contract has  been a waste of time as it has not been informed by the contract. Furthermore, we understand the Council are passing on near daily performance data to to Cllrs which comes from Veolia, and is not be questioned or scrutinized, but readily accepted by the Council so we are reliably informed.

All the Cllrs who sit on the Task & Finish Group have tried to get the meetings held in public but were informed this was not possible. Some of them did ask to see the contract, but it was never forthcoming.

The Inquiry into the Veolia Fiasco was steered from beginning to end by officers, who directed Cllrs in the direction they wanted them to go. And of course, the amount of scrutiny placed on the Council’s failings in this fiasco, where of course miniscule – quelle surprise.

The Shepway Vox Team

Dissent is NOT a Crime