Interserve & Sandwell Council

In the last couple of days, Interserve, have started smashing-up The Public. The "cabinet" of Sandwell Council (SMBC) specifically voted to suspend their normal contractual and procurement rules to give them the multi-million pound contract without tender or competition but have not said why this was done (and the mainstream media can't be bothered to ask).  One must assume that no-one within the Council is "on the take" and so I have speculated on Twitter what the hold is that Interserve has over the Labour councillors.

Ironically, Interserve built the allegedly too small new Sandwell College but they were involved with SMBC in the last Labour Goverment's disastrously expensive Building for Schools programme. Needless to say, in the secret state of Sandwell the true facts about these contracts have never been made public. Interserve themselves boast on their website that they were paid to build three of the schools and then contracted to receive  a meagre £50M over 25 years for "facilities management" just for those 3. They were involved in two more before the Government scrapped the scheme.

SMBC formed a joint company with Interserve for the Building for Schools programme called Sandwell Futures Limited and I am not sure whether any money they pay into that company comes back to them. No doubt SMBC will hasten to explain.

I have today been through the list of payments made by SMBC over £500 for the month of December and am truly shocked by my findings. SMBC have to produce this by law. It is possible there are other payments under £500 to Interserve-related companies but I cannot tell. Again SMBC may wish to clarify. There are also some large payments to oddly-named companies which I am still investigating but what follows is bad enough.

Clearly Interserve are into SMBC for more than (about) 5 schools - there must be other deals going on which are secret. Have they been put out to tender, I wonder? Anyway, I am going to set out the full stomach-churning list of payments so that you can see for yourselves just what is going on.

REMEMBER - THESE ARE PAYMENTS FOR JUST ONE MONTH

To Sandwell Futures Limited from the Education & Children's Service Budget:

                                                   174,309.00
                                                       7,598.00
                                                       6,173.83

                                Total           188,080.93

To Sandwell Futures Limited from the Individual Schools Budget:

                                                        2,158.95
                                                        5,259.45
                                                    105,812.08
                                                        4,263.95
                                                      56,008.27
                                                    103,607.15
                                                        1,438.00
                                                    104,521.35
                                                      85,527.82
                                                        9,322.00
                                                      40,183.96
                               Less credit       (2,830.00)

                                   Total         515,272.98

To Sandwell Futures Limited from Strategic Resources Budget:

                                                     442,240.00
                                                     459,700.00

                                      Total       901,940.00

To Sandwell Futures Limited from Street Scene Budget:

                                                     118,738.57
                                                     124,955.18
                                                         1,999.09
                                                            631.43
                                                         1,133.24
                                                         1,250.76
                                                         1,428.02
                                                       35,919.58
                                                       15,293.54
                                                       60,549.99
                                                            605.95
                                                         2,450.38
                                                         4,514.35
                                                         6,756.44

                                        Total     376,226.52

And so in just ONE MONTH Sandwell Futures received £1,981,520.40 ie NEARLY £2M in ONE MONTH (the ANNUAL budget for The Public was approx £1.5M).

BUT WAIT - IT GETS WORSE. There are further payments(just in the single month of December) in respect of the crazy PFI deals to another Interserve company, Environments for Learning PFI (One) Limited:

                                                        2,644.36
                                                    567,089.12

                                         Total   569,753.48

And so there's over half a million pounds again in just ONE month.

SMBC have two directors on the Board of Sandwell Futures. I wonder if any sort of conflict of interest arises? One of those directors is someone called Melanie Dudley who is paid a mere £120,092 per annum by SMBC according to their audited accounts.

Using the vernacular on Twitter I said that Interserve had had Cooper's pants down but it looks like they have smacked his arse as well! I gather the local Labour party are having a "cost of Cameron" day this weekend but Sandwell taxpayers might like to print this and question their representatives on the "cost of Cooper"!

CUTS? WHAT CUTS?

Info always welcome to Vernon Grant, Box 374, 27 Colmore Row, Birmingham B3 2EW

Twitter @bcrover