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Fined firms work here
• HOW interesting that the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has issued a press release regarding building firms engaged in illegal, anti-competitive, bid-rigging activities, and that two of the companies fined are currently working on Islington Council properties, namely Kier and Apollo. Full details can be found at http://oft.gov.uk/news/press/2009/114-09.
The OFT concluded that the firms engaged in anti-competitive activities on 199 tenders from 2000 to 2006, mostly in the form of cover pricing, “where one or more bidders in a tender process obtains an artificially high price from a competitor. Such cover bids are priced so as not to win the contract but are submitted as genuine bids, which gives a misleading impression to clients as to the real extent of competition. This distorts the tender process and makes it less likely that other potentially cheaper firms are invited to tender.”
Kier has been fined £17,894,438 and Apollo £2,150,536.
I hope Islington Council and Homes for Islington take all of this into account when tenders for repairs contracts are reprocured later this year. Or, will it be a case that the price of the tender will include an amount to pay off these fines?
Life was so much easier when the council ran its own repair and building services.
Martin Rutherford
Secretary, Popham Estate Tenants and Residents Association
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