Summary: Mr X complained about the Council wrongly preventing his company from submitting a tender for a CCTV contract in March 2018. He says the Council offered the contract to a company which had already exceeded the EU threshold for tenders for work. The Ombudsman should not investigate this complaint. There is insufficient evidence of fault which has caused injustice to Mr X.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I shall call Mr X, complains the Council wrongly prevented his company from submitting a tender for a CCTV contract in March 2018. He says that the Council awarded the contract to a rival company which had already exceeded EU limits for contracts in previous work. Mr X says this has affected his company’s income and reputation.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. I refer to this as ‘injustice’. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe:

• it is unlikely we would find fault, or
• it is unlikely we could add to any previous investigation by the Council, or
• it is unlikely further investigation will lead to a different outcome.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

3. I have considered all the information which Mr X submitted with his complaint.

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What I found

4. Mr X complained about his company being excluded from the tendering process for a scheme to replace CCTV cameras. The Council chose a company chosen which had previously carried out work on an emergency control room in 2015/2016. Mr X says the total work awarded to the company since 2015 is over £260,000 and this exceeds the EU threshold for tenders of £181,000. The Council has produced the details of the spend on different tenders for separate contracts for this work.
5. The Council says the contract for the CCTV was less than £30,000 and that this was a separate contract to the control centre one of previous years. Mr X was initially given an incorrect figure of £190,300 for the cumulative amount of spend with the successful company since 2014. However, this was not relevant to the latest contract which was a separate procurement.
6. Mr X complained to the Ombudsman about his failure to be offered an opportunity to bid for this contract in 2018. We decided in that complaint (reference 18 019 536) that there was no evidence of fault in the Council’s actions. Mr X was unaware of the Council’s total spend with the rival company until after we had closed the original investigation. I do not consider that there is anything in Mr X’s new complaint which would alter our original view on this matter

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Final decision

7. The Ombudsman should not investigate this complaint. There is insufficient evidence of fault which has caused injustice to Mr X.

Investigator’s final decision on behalf of the Ombudsman

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman