What a Waste

A reader from South Lanarkshire kindly drew my attention to the following article from her local newspaper - the Hamilton Advertiser.

I have to say that three words sprang immediately to mind on reading the piece - ORGANISE, PISS-UP AND BREWERY.

So my question is - 'How would readers use these three words to form a complete sentence - which also makes reference to South Lanarkshire Council?'     

Legal action scuppers South Lanarkshire Council’s bid to award waste contract

South Lanarkshire Council were this week facing an £88,000 legal bill after deciding not to fight a challenge over their municipal waste contract.

In September last year, the authority awarded their 25-year waste disposal contract to Viridor, who bid £459million for the work.

It followed a two-year procurement exercise.

Waste giant Viridor beat off competition from a number of companies, among them Forth-based Levenseat Ltd.

The contract was due to commence on April 1, with Viridor trucking waste that cannot be recycled down to Runcorn, Cheshire, for incineration.

However, Levenseat raised at the Court of Session in Edinburgh an action questioning the award of the contract.

The court granted an interim order which, effectively, put a hold on the implementation of the new agreement between the council and Viridor.

Council lawyers were due to challenge the court action.

However, yesterday (Wednesday), officials told council’s executive committee they had given up the fight and agreed to pay Levenseat’s legal bill, believed to be in the region of £38,000.

The council’s own legal fees are believed to be in the region of £50,000.

In a behind-closed-doors meeting, chief executive Lindsay Freeland said they would now have to go through the tendering process all over again.

It’s likely to take two years.

Following the meeting, a spokesman for the council said the committee had given community and enterprise director Colin McDowell the go-ahead to cancel the procurement exercise started in 2009 and bring forward detailed options for a new waste contract that will meet the latest legislation.

The spokesman confirmed that the council would be withdrawing from legal action pending at the Court of Session concerning waste procurement.

She added: “ Since 2009, when our original procurement exercise got underway, the Scottish Government have passed more legislation and issued additional guidance.

“Just recently, it has become clear that the method we had intended to use for separating and collecting food waste is not going to meet their requirements.

“This means there is little point in us defending the legal action on the procurement process as it needs to be revisited anyway.”

Council leader Eddie McAvoy insisted the problem would not interrupt collections of domestic waste.

Levenseat and Viridor, who collected the area’s waste up until April 1, had their contract extended when it became clear the council faced legal action over the award of the tender to Viridor.

Councillor McAvoy said: “What we will do is come to some temporary arrangement for disposing of waste until such time as we re-tender the big waste contract.”

“The problem was that the processing of food waste was not introduced into the tendering process at the outset.

“The reason was that the Scottish Government came along, once the process was underway, and said we should look at putting the processing of waste into the contract.

“That meant some firms who were out of the tendering process by then, felt it was unfair because they didn’t have the opportunity to tender for the food waste processing.

“We withdrew from the legal action brought by Levenseat on the advice of our QC who thought it was unlikely to succeed.”