More than 500 contracts dealt with by Liverpool Council did not comply with its own processes, an assessment by external investigators has established.
Last year’s damning Caller Report, which led to the appointment of government commissioners at the council, placed an intense focus on how the local authority manages procurement. Further pressure engulfed the authority following the expensive energy contract debacle revealed in May and a failure to renew more than a dozen “high level” contracts.
As a result, Liverpool Council appointed 4C Associates to embark on a six-week period of work assessing more than £550m of spend in the last financial year to help shape its procurement improvement plan. While its new plan makes almost 50 recommendations of “improvement opportunities,” a wider assessment identified how hundreds of contracts were exempt from the local authority’s standing orders and could have cost the council up to £50m.
