‘Overturn decision and it will cost us’
GUERNSEY WASTE will push ahead in signing a new contract for managing the island’s food waste, having warned deputies attempting to promote a rival scheme of its cost implications.
The States’ Trading Supervisory Board has written to Deputy Carl Meerveld, who is leading the push for an alternative option, warning about costs and the difficulty of getting any new scheme approved in time for the new contract to come into effect on 1 January 2024.
‘There is no reasonable prospect that this could be implemented before the current contract expires,’ said STSB vice-president Charles Parkinson, pictured, in the letter.
‘Our new service provider needs time to prepare for the transition and requires contractual certainty to do that. We therefore cannot put it off indefinitely, pending the outcome of some 11th-hour intervention that may or may not result in some future changes.’
In the letter Deputy Parkinson points out the ‘near certainty’ of higher costs and ‘significant reputational risk to the States’ if STSB’s preferred option was overturned. He said that the board would not delay signing the new contract.
There would be cost implications in extending a short-term arrangement with the current supplier, or to treat food waste with general waste, and if the new provider walked away from the contract following ‘political interference’.
‘Any financial savings that we have achieved would then be lost, and we would be required to restart another tender process. The outcome of that is highly unlikely to result in more favourable terms, and more likely that not will be much less attractive to any of the companies who chose to participate in the recent process,’ he added.
Deputy Meerveld’s favoured local option, which involves the use of flies to breakdown food waste and produce fertiliser, has been promoted as an opportunity to save the States money.
But although it participated in the procurement process, its submission scored the lowest of all potential tenderers and it did not make the shortlist to submit a formal tender.
Independent, third-party experts advising STSB said it could not provide evidence or reassurance that it could provide a ‘robust, deliverable solution’ and they had concerns about environmental claims made.
