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Consultant's report on Downham delays delivered to Mayor

"...PFI procurement is a very stressful process, and almost everyone involved fails at some point to maintain a calm, rational, and professional approach. Indeed, I have even known several people who have become ill as a result of the stress involved. Moreover, many difficult issues have to be faced, and painful things often have to be said during the course of negotiations. What is important is that everyone is able to recover from this and move on..."

The above is probably the literary pearl contained in the report commissioned by London Borough of Lewisham (LBL) about the problems encountered during the negotiations of the Downham PFI.
It will be discussed at Mayor and Cabinet this coming Wednesday.

You can read the full report here.

In the report the consultant hired to summarize the reasons for the delays in the project gives a picture of the 'partners' busy at blaming each other for a number of unprofessional behaviours.

In a nutshell:

- the Council blames the preferred bidder Linteum/Leisure Connection consortium of being not much more than a one man band and how this led to a bottle-neck in negotiations;

- the Consultant expresses concern as to why the Council awarded the contract to the bidder without negotiating better terms at that stage, when negotiating power for the Council is at its highest;

- the Consortium blames the Council for a lack of focus during the procurement process;

- the other partner, Primary Care Trust (PCT) "accept that they were under-resourced to deal with the project, and they also suggest that LBL suffered from similar difficulties".
Also, PCT say that "they feel that they were not in a position to influence the selection of the preferred bidder, and that LBL focussed too much on affordability"

The report makes also some other comments rather critical of Lewisham Council's handling of the project.

Here's a selection of passages:

"...LBL had no consistent senior management presence focussing on the project, in the role of "project director" or "sponsor". The Head of Culture was involved at the beginning, but did not maintain and ongoing personal representation in the negotiation phase..."

"...LBL had no consistent involvement of a financial or accounting officer in the project team..."

"...there may have been insufficient detailed involvement of key members in the decision-making and project governance arrangements..."

This last comment seems to suggest that the Mayor of Lewisham Steve Bullock and the Cabinet Member for Culture Cllr Alyson McGarrigle were rather absent from the process that they were so often expressing both enthusiasm for and frustration for the delays. ...read more...