The truths they don't want you to read....
The goat has been well and truly scaped.
The Councillors were given an informal and off the record briefing on Monday night which was complete-ish but meant that there could be no discussion during the rest of the week about the utter mess that the tendering produced.
There is an internal audit report in progress that, I believe, tells a different story. No doubt the embarrassing bits will be edited out before the Councillors get to see it.
Just so that no-one is in any doubt, although the entire tendering process is managed from top to bottom by a small and very powerful group in the Executive Office (the Chief Executive's dept), they are found to be utterly, completely and totally blameless in having anything to do with the tendering process being wrong. After all, it can't be their responsibility to check the facts....
"Do any senior council Officers ever get held to account for any incompetency, failures or for wasting Council resources?"
He didn't wait for a reply, as he knew the answer.
But, that may not be the case by this weekend.
Update: According to an email from the Executive Office today, the gritting contract was withdrawn because the mileages on the tender were wildly (my words) wrong.
It may be possible that the mileages have changed since the last tenders, or that there is some kind of timeslip outside the boundaries of Stornoway, which must play havoc with the bus contracts. Perhaps 36 years of managing the road network has not given enough data for the Department to give accurate measurements.
Nevertheless, that is only part of the story. Perhaps Councillors might want to look at the first and second tenders and note some of the other fundamental changes.
And ask the simple question: "Why?"
Further thought: Given that the entire process was abandoned, are they Officers saying that they got the mileages wrong in every parcel? Remember that the last but one mis-tender cost £250,000 in damages to Sovval's, and Councillors should ask if the same fingerprints are all over the same process. (A: Yes)
As there is now an in-house option, does this not amount to skewing the contract in the favour of a new bidder at the expense of the existing bidders, who have been tacitly accepted. And now the Comhairle has the prices; which of course the DLO won't see. I predict multiple legal action if any of the winning tenders are now lost.
I went past Market Stance a dozen times in the past few days, and was - like most of Uist - awe inspired by the veritable Mt Everest of road salt that had been shipped in, and is now left to be rained upon over the winter, and lose it efficiency with every raindrop.
Today, the following email was issued by the Council....
A notice that you have registered an interest in has been cancelled. The notice details are shown below.
Notice ID: JUL095586
Title: Ice Gritting and Snow Clearing 2011 – 2015
Authority: Comhairle nan Eilean Siar
Reason:
This contract has now been readvertised. See new advert 29.09.11
Are any Councillors interested in the reasons for this contract being withdrawn?
Perhaps the question is, how could the very senior persons involved in this get it so fundamentally wrong?
BTW, Councillors and contractors may also be interested to know that many of the scores achieved by the original tenderers are in the semi-public domain.
That'll engender confidence in the fairness and confidentiality of the process.
If the Council believe that diluting
the salt mix on roads is acceptable, when it leads to a bus load of kids going into the ditch, can I 'dilute' my Council Tax payments with beads?
I think the problem here is that no-one expected any cold weather in the winter.
I understand that the Council just renegotiated/imposed new contracts on those doing the gritting, whereby the standing charge was reduced and the mileage allowance increased. This save money on gritting in every year except those where you need to grit, so expect to see a huge overspend reported.
The impact of the ice is obvious in the huge potholes in the roads that are downright dangerous in some places, and which is going to keep the road squad busy for the Spring.
It was inevitable, wasn't it.
As soon as Alex Salmond professed his "complete confidence" in the Minister, it was time to clear the Minister desk, and hitch a lift in the Ministerial Mondeo, before the country goes all snowy again.
I bet the Met Office didn't forecast that did they?
(With apologies to Private Eye)
Farewell then, Stewart Stevenson
Your career wouldn't have been derailed
If the trains had been running.
You read the forecasts
to the MSPs
in their mind-numbing entirety
in lieu of making a statement.
Unfortunately, that was still
better
than the rest of your performance
as Minister.
EJ Thribb 17 1/2 feet down in a snowdrift in Perthshire
After the hiatus caused by the collapse of ROK it was good to see the contractors back on site at Manor Drive, trying to get the houses wind and water tight before the winter hits (!)
There were at least three or four guys and one fork lift busy on site, but perhaps the rest were trying to avoid frostbite, and the prospects of having the houses done on anything near the original deadline looks, sadly, impossible.
Unfortunately, none of that will replace the losses suffered by the sub-contractors when ROK went under.
Hats off to the Councillor at the recent informal and unreported meetings who raised the most important issuing that has deeply affected all the public.
I refer, of course, to the impact of the gritting issues on the public of the Western Isles.
Step forward, Nobel nominee
Cllr Murdo Maroot who alerted members to the most serious of all the issues.....that the gritting was causing problems for the paws of small dogs.
Cllr MacLeod An important constituentIf the sniggering behind the hands of the Councillors is anything to go by, then he certainly has impressed his colleagues with his grasp of the priorities.
In the absence of grit, the Council put down a lot of gravel on the pavements.
Scottish Water are furious about this, as the gravel is blocking the pipes and the filters and giving them huge maintenance headaches.
The emergency grit supplies arrived today, just in time for the thaw to start. The main roads are very good, but side roads and especially pavements and parking areas are nothing but compacted ice, which I don't think that the grit will make any difference to.
Many pedestrians are finding the roads the safer option, and until the temperatures rises and some sunlight falls on the iced areas, this is going to persist. My back garden is a good weather vane, as it is sheltered from the sun in winter, and the snow is still lying thick and deep over the lawn, with the drive thawing slightly and then freezing into lethal ice. Hopefully the warm rain on Wednesday will melt the ice and let us all back to normal.
It is good to see that the Health Board are taking the winter weather seriously and are
planning accordingly. (Original doc turned into pdf).
Look carefully at what is being said...
There is a possible delivery of salt/grit due to take place on Monday [11th] by bulk cargo container.
Planning assumptions....
Gritting will continue only on a minimum of roads until Friday/Saturday after which no gritting will be carried out.
[...]
From Friday/Saturday evening until stocks are replenished and gritting restarts, it can be assumed that road surfaces will remain frozen from 1700hrs through until 1200hrs the following day and thawing will only take place after this time for a period of daylight hours should sunlight directly hit the surface.
Can anyone tell me what the Council have planned (prepared for?) or do they intend to decide the plan for this next week?
It is good to see that at least one public body is thinking in advance (but what does this mean about the effectiveness of the Community Planning Partnership?)
H/T to my correspondent.
The headline in
Hebrides News says it all:
Ice shuts schools as salt supplies almost run out
Having got the kids back into an early-bed routine in preparation for what is for us the busiest month of the year, the Comhairle have managed to ensure that the Primary School and the Nursery are closed tomorrow; and I guess Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, given the forecasts.
With something like two months work to be packed
into January, it is all going a bit mental in the Nicolson residence tonight.
The office phones are diverted to the mobile, if they are not answered within a number of rings (which also acts as an answering machine), and we had about half-a-dozen calls from Englandshire today, but the emails and calls will start in earnest tomorrow. Past experience is that the first day back is normally utterly crazy, and tomorrow will be no exception, only even worse as we will not be able to access the files and we will be working from two locations, or possibly exclusively from home.
Looking out the window at 6:30pm, there is no traffic moving; the snow is falling and lying heavily on the roads; no-one is moving - if they dare to risk life and limb; and the weather forecast has just confirmed the adverse outlook.
#Things can only get better#
Gritter crews hard at work in Stornoway
As the snow falls once again, bathing the town in a deadly sheet of snow-covered ice, I look from our house window gazing across the beautiful scene.
It surely can't be long now until the gritters make their way out and about and spread the precious load of rock-salt across the roads, car parks, pavements and collapsed pedestrians that give the town a post-apocalyptic, rather than post-Christmas, look.
Stornoway town centre this morning
Last week they made their appearance in town in the late afternoon, with the grit being carried from the back of a lorry with shovels to be cast onto pavements.
However, one service was running absolutely as normal.
At 7:45am on Sunday the road sweeper made its way through town to make sure the roads were clean beneath the snow before Church started.
Good priority choices.
