Another motion being put forward for next week’s full council meeting is from Independent councillor Chris Welsford.
Cllr Welsford’s motion asks for members to make note of several points in which he claims the Isle of Wight council breached certain parts of the constitution when they made the Highways PFI decision.
Highways PFI dependent on asphalt decision
He argues that as planning permission for the proposed asphalt plant at Medina Wharf is a ‘strategic requirement’ to Vinci meeting their contractal conditions, and that the council’s environmental health officer had already expressed serious concerns over the application, but neither the Cabinet nor full council were notified prior to the decision making process, that breaches were made.
Open up the debate
Cllr Welsford told On The Wight that he hoped the debate would give both sides a chance to flesh out the arguments surrounding the issues raised in the motion and hopefully agree to change the policies and allow the constitution to operate freely.
“In that way, decisions in the future will benefit from all the facts being at the disposal of the decision makers and the teams working on bids.” he said.
His motion asks:
That Council notes:
1) Any assessment of a bid for an important tender with long term financial consequences for this Council and the Isle of Wight, must take into account the probability of that bid being deliverable, with or without recourse to contractual penalties.2) The need for a new dedicated Asphalt Plant is an important strategic requirement that will enable VINCI Concessions, Meridiam Infrastructure and Ringway to successfully comply with the terms of the PFI contract.
3) The Isle of Wight Council’s Environmental Health Department expressed serious concerns regarding the proposed Asphalt Plant, recommending that planning permission be refused, which was information available but not disclosed to cabinet members at the time of the Cabinet decision taken in May 2012.
4) The Highways PFI decision, takenbyCabinet andratifiedby Full Council breached the Council’s constitution in the following ways:
The following constitutional “Principles of Decision Making” highlighted in bold, were not complied with (bracketed letters correspond with those sections from the Constitution):
1. (a) That relevant matters are taken into account:
- Relevant Information relating to a significant component of the winning bid was not evaluated and was in fact deemed irrelevant (under the terms of (b) “Nothing irrelevant is considered”)
- The decision to ignore this information provided a false impression to Cabinet Members and to Members, meaning that they voted without full knowledge of pertinent facts relevant to their assessment of the bids
2. (d) That proper advice is taken and considered before the decision:
- Proper advice relating to the quality of the Vinci Meridiam bid was not made available to cabinet members and was therefore not taken.
3. (g) Proportionality (i.e. the action must be proportionate to the desired outcome):
- Because the requirement for a new Asphalt Plant is an important part of the Vinci Meridiam bid, for which there is no stated “plan B”, Environmental Health’s advice and recommendation for refusal of planning permission, on such fundamental environmental health grounds, was highly relevant to the desired outcome.
- The proportionality requirement would suggest that consideration should have been made as to the comparative virtues of preserving the separateness of the two processes or allowing information to be shared between the two in the interests of a desirable outcome for the bidding process.
4. (j) Presumption in favour of openness:
- In this case the presumption appears to have been in favour of non-‐disclosure of information that was relevant to the Cabinet evaluation and decision-‐making process.
