High Court judge finds council made manifest errors in £10m tender evaluation
A council made a number of manifest errors in its tender evaluation process for a £10m framework agreement for asbestos removal and reinstatement services, a High Court judge has ruled.
Mr Justice Coulson also ruled in Woods Building Services v Milton Keynes Council [2015] EWHC 2011 (TCC) that there were certain instances where the council had been in breach of its duties of equality and transparency.
Taken together, the judge’s conclusions reduced by 40 the marks awarded to European Asbestos Services (EAS), to whom Milton Keynes had sought to award the contract, and increased by 6 the marks that should have been awarded to Woods, the incumbent provider and the claimant in the proceedings.
“It is for counsel to tell me what effect that has on the overall weighted scores but I am confident that this will mean that Woods outscored EAS so that there should have been a different result,” Mr Justice Coulson said.
Woods had submitted the cheapest of the five tenders, but lost out to EAS (by 3%) over the council’s evaluation of the quality criteria.
A further hearing is to be held on the remedy to be granted to the claimant as a result of the judge’s findings.
According to Joseph Barrett, barrister at 11KBW and counsel to Woods, this was the first case in which an English court had set aside a public body’s contract award decision under the Public Contract Regulations 2006.
He highlighted the High Court’s findings that:
- the council’s evaluation of 8 of the 12 award criteria was unlawful; and
- in relation to two of the award criteria where the council had purported to award EAS scores of 10/10, the EAS tender response should have been scored 0/10.
Barrett said: “The judgment contains extensive analysis of the approach the Court will take to legal challenges to procurement evaluation scoring decisions and demonstrates that (in an appropriate case) the Court will conduct a careful analysis of the legality and fairness of such procedures.”
