THE THURROCK Enquirer newspaper is facing an uncertain future after losing their contract with Thurrock Council to their bitter rival, the Thurrock Gazette.
The Thurrock Enquirer, part of the Billericay-based Enquirer group, that also publishes the East London Enquirer and Essex Enquirer, won the contract from under the noses of the Thurrock Gazette in 2010.
The successful bid won national exposure as many saw it as a real coup for small independent "David’s|" winning council contracts against multi-national giants.
Council advertising rakes in over £80 million nationally and it is estimated that Newsquest has, over the years, made in excess of a million pounds from Thurrock Council.
YT asked the editor of the Thurrock Enquirer for a response.
Neil Speight said:
"Clearly we were disappointed to lose out on the contract to continue carrying the Council’s advertising.
Initially, we accepted the decision and bemoaned the fact that we had made poor decisions when pitching our bid.
"However, when we were made aware of the circumstances of the decision-making process it became clear to me that it is not one that is fit for purpose and in fact even the contract tender documents themselves, do not meet the Council’s own criteria.
The contract system uses a points system. 50 per cent of the points are awarded for price and 50 per cent for service and delivery values. The lowest price gets awarded 50 per cent of the points and the higher bids get a pro-rata share of the points. So if you bid £1 for example and that was the lowest, a bid of £1.50 would accrue 25% of the points. That appears, on the face of it, a fair system.
However, it is the award of the other 50 per cent which is crucial.
In pitching our bid, we ‘guessed’ what points we might be awarded based on the terms and conditions put in front of us and how we felt we met them. For instance, 20% of the points were awarded for what the Council calls ‘Mobility’ – effectively how you would mobilise the implementation of the contract and provide the service.
"As the existing service provider all the systems are in place and in more than four years there has never been a complaint about our service provision. So, not unrealistically, we expected a mark of 20pts (or very close to it) as we clearly fully met all the specified criteria. Yet we got 11.8 points only. That was still more than any other bidder but by any logical standard, seems inexplicably low.
So, having established an expected mark across the service provision we looked at our price offer and, knowing that others might bid slightly lower, the terms of the contract and the Council’s social values specify that a bid must be sustainable (in other words you can’t bid below cost and therefore lose money to win it) and knowing the market price of things like newsprint and transport, we were able to come up with a price we felt would be part of a winning bid. In fact we maintained the same price we have quoted since winning the contract five years ago.
So while not sure, we were confident in the quality and value of our bid.
Yet the ‘marking’ in reality, confounded all our expectations. Though we came top in them all against rival bidders we were marked unexpectedly low in all categories and therefore on aggregate lost the bid by a handful of points.
At the risk of being faced with the accusation of ‘sour grapes’ I have to say this is an injustice – and that has already prompted senior members of the Council’s staff, when I queried the decision, to concede that the process is flawed. Indeed, when studied in depth, even the Council’s original contract documents do not meet the authority’s published standard.
We have all heard about the disastrous Thurrock Council contracts with companies like Vertex and Morrison and the flaws and problems with them. It seems the problems in the procurement department remain deep-seated!
The impact of this flawed decision on the Thurrock Enquirer is a difficult one to assess at this point but it will inevitably mean some changes.
"Unfortunately I have already had to make the decision to implement one redundancy and cancel plans to open an office in Grays which would have created two jobs. Our business is a small and family owned one. We do not actually seek to make a significant profit each year, our aim is to serve the communities we publish in and offer employment where we can.
"I am grateful that our owners are not greedy, but are Thurrock-born and keen to offer a genuine service rather than an American-owned share-price and profit driven conglomerate that has outsourced its production facilities to the cheap labour market of the sub Asian continent at the expense of the jobs of local people.
"We will endeavour to carry on offering an alternative publication in Thurrock that is a critical friend of the Council, a supporter of the Borough and its businesses and a champion of its people. Hopefully we can bounce back.
We bear no malice towards Thurrock Council which is on a journey of considerable improvement. Sadly, sometimes you have to break eggs to make an omelette as they say and if this unfortunate circumstance for us might in time lead to a better and fairer procurement system for other small local businesses, then something positive has been achieved.
A spokesperson for Thurrock Council has set the record straight on the contract but also sent out a positive message for the Enquirer.
The spokesperson said: "We awarded the contract for statutory advertising only (public notices) to the Thurrock Gazette following a procurement process.
"The Enquirer has provided the council with a highly reliable service through the previous contracts, often going above and beyond what was asked for.
"However, the new contract gives the council the flexibility to continue to work with other organisations, including the Enquirer, on other advertising opportunities".
