I have been a bit quiet lately for reasons I shall vouchsafe to you shortly but this week has been a corker in bent Labour Sandwell with the corrupt "socialist" Council in disarray as a scandal exculsively disclosed by this blog was finally picked-up in the mainstream media and gone all the way to the floor of the House of Commons via the most subdued Cabinet meeting ever (the first under the stewardship of Cllr Rajbir "Puppet On A String" Singh).
Over a week ago, I exclusively broke the story that bent Labour were intending to give multi-million contracts for the transport of folk with special educational needs (SEND contracts) to two limited companies - both owned and controlled by Azeem Hafeez. If you are not up to speed on this please refer to my short post breaking this story:
http://thesandwellskidder.blogspot.com/2021/06/hurrah-for-azeem.html
Azeem, widely known as Ed, was arrested in the fraud enquiry in connection with land sales and other matters at bent Labour Sandwell. It is important to note that he was never charged with any offence and strongly denies any wrongdoing. On the other hand, West Police Police have offered their "protection" to his father, a former Labour Deputy Leader, and a senior WMP Officer (as yet unidentified but at very high level) at the Bent Blues ordered the fraud investigation to stop so that the bent Council could have an "independent" solicitor investigate those aspects of possible fraud which SMBC itself felt merited investigation (posts passim ad nauseum)!!! Further, Azeem then point-blank refused to assist the fake SMBC "investigation" even though, incredibly, he was an employee of the bent paid service!
(There are very serious allegations emerging of the role of disgraced former Chief Executive, Jan Britton, in the respect of (a) the narrow terms of reference for the investigation, (b) attempts to influence the findings and (c) the cost (which I have written about previously). Currently Labour Councillors are blocking the release of what I am told is an absolutely "explosive" review of the so-called "investigation". Watch this space!)
What we know of the SEND contract saga so far:
There are widespread allegations (and I use the word advisedly) that the bent paid service, under the "leadership" of David Stevens now, has rigged the contract award. This whole tender process is still "live" and so there is no way Sandwell will provide any public information but very serious questions are being asked, and I have been copied into correpondence sent to Stevens and "The Puppet" Singh.
The existing SEND contract was operated by some 20 local firms but is due to end on 31st July (although the current operators claim it could be extended under the current deal to February, 2022 - something I can't comment on at this stage).
On 12th August, 2020 the scheme for a new contract came before the Cabinet which included Cllrs Wasim Ali and Farut Shaeen (the wife of Cllr Zahoor Ahmed). Both are believed to have close ties with the Hussain family (actually denied by Wasim Ali) and thus to know Azeem Hafeez well. Also present was The Puppet Singh himself.
As under Britton, Stevens likes to let his staff have a good metaphorical w*nk in these reports and they duly wrote:
"We have created, implement and manage our service to ensure our SEND passengers are respected and cared for through the provision of a high-quality and accountable transport service."
[They went for a metaphorical double orgasm by adding the ludicrous boast, "Sandwell now has a national reputation for getting things done ... ROFLMAO!]
You might think from this that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". But there are budgetry worries (hardly suprising as bent Labour are wasting multi-millions on the likes of the absurd Commonwealth Games). But the corrupt Comrades agreed to set up a new tendering system called a "Dynamic Purchasing System" (DPS) and stated that one of the aims was to:
"increase (my emphasis) the number of operators on the DPS to encourage competitive pricing and undertake benchmarking exercises against other providers to achieve best value and reduce costs of individual contracts."
As above, there were already some 20 operators providing what the bent paid service said was an excellent service and yet SMBC took a free market decision that they wanted MORE competition to drive down prices (Maggie Thatcher would have been so proud!)
There is nothing in this Cabinet decision, however, that suggests that the current operational-level system would be scrapped too. This, in general terms, provided that one firm did all the transport for each school/venue. There was nothing to say that, in fact, Sandwell were going to divide the whole contract into just four (large) lots. (At present the bent paid service are refusing to say when and how this decision was made and who authorised it. There are rumours that a particular Councillor was directly involved in that decision but the other firms have been unable to get any information on this yet.) Many of the existing firms are small operators and so were immediately going to have to face extra costs and strain on already limited resources by having to go through a detailed tender process against "the big boys" (and they are boys ...) It seems some did not even understand that the contracts were being divided up in this way and they are complaining about a lack of transparency and help from SMBC staff (who are supposed to be helping small local businesses - or so the absurd Labour spin goes).
The comrades also agreed that the contracts would not simply be awarded to the lowest bidder but would take into account nebulous concepts like "quality of provision" and "social value". Given Azeem's involvement in the land sales and other matters you would have though he was a non-starter via "social value" but bent Labour built in plenty of "wriggle room" for themselves when it came to deciding who would get these large contracts.
Now things get a little strange. Without wanting to get too technical, the use of smaller vehicles for this type of contract has to be authorised by local Office of the Traffic Commissioner. Azeem realised this immediately (presumably because of his business acumen rather than a tip-off) and applied via one of his companies (North Birmingham Travel Limited - NBTL) to increase the number of its smaller vehicles from 20 to 30. He knew this approval was critical to winning the largest of the four contracts. Very prescient of him but despite this he hit a snag. Such was the "quality" of his operation, the Commissioners only allowed - pending further audit - an increase from 20 to 25 vehicles on the basis three NBTL vehicles had been untaxed for more than two months (!) and that there was not a robust vehicle defect reporting system so that drivers were missing "obvious" detectable defects. Quality indeed.
Incidentally, his other company, County Cars (2003) Limited which won the other three contracts also fell foul of the powers that be. In 2019 the Traffic Commissioners warned Azeem his PSV licence would be revoked unless he employed a suitably-qualified transport manager.
The Skidder has received numerous complaints from the overlooked firms which go way beyond "sour grapes" and which raise very serious questions about the tendering process within Steven's bent paid service. I have to stress that these are allegations and so you must read them as such save to say that they are ones that have been submitted by aggrieved parties to Stevens and The Puppet:
- that the winning contracts were not decided on price and so who in the bent paid service decided the "quality and social value" aspect of the bids and how was this done?
- why, when SMBC said it wanted to increase the number of competing firms, did 80% of existing suppliers get knocked out of the process at the initial selection stage and bent Labour reduce the number of suppliers from around 20 to just 2 (and both of them owned by the same person)? [Addendum 18/06/21 - just to clarify, some of those knocked out at the initial stage appealed. There are more than 2 firms on the DPS but only Azeem's two won work.]
- which Councillors were involved in all this?
- why were most SMBC staff working in the existing SEND service barred from participating in the contract "quality and social value" evaluation aspect of the tender award given their expertise on all this? Only one manager was allowed to participate.
- Did one member of staff go off sick due to stress over concerns about the manner in which Steven's staff were conductng this process?
- The tender says the winning bidders must show turnover of at least 2x contract value which was seemingly met, but if it was, why did SMBC decide to take the real risk of putting ALL its eggs in what is, in reality, one basket?
- Azeem has had an appalling historic record of corporate governance (as detailed in this blog) and failures to comply with the legal requirements of Companies House. Was this taken into account when SMBC assessed the "quality" of provision?
- Has Azeem got connections with Egan Travel?
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