School contracts awarded on price despite complaints

Feb 28 2008 by Madeleine Brindley, Western Mail

VITAL checks on safety and quality were not carried out on the butcher at the centre of the E.coli outbreak, despite a long history of serious complaints about meat supplied to schools.

The E.coli inquiry yesterday heard that John Tudor & Son was twice awarded the £500,000-a-year contract, in 1998 and 2002, largely on the grounds of cost alone.

Scores of complaints from school kitchens about undercooked and rancid meat were given little weight by Rhondda Cynon Taf Council officials who awarded and later extended Tudor’s contract on behalf of itself, Bridgend and Merthyr Tydfil councils.

Only Caerphilly Council, which compiled a dossier of 40 serious complaints ab- out the butcher, decided to deal with a different butcher between 1998 and 2005, because of quality concerns.

James Eadie, senior counsel to the public inquiry, said there had been:

No focus on food safety;

No liaison with environmental health officers who had inspected the business;

No real checks on safety and quality claims made by Tudor during the tender process;

No visits made to his factory before the contract was awarded;

Few steps taken to positively monitor the contract.

David Evans, Rhondda Cynon Taf Council’s contracts manager and the chairman of the collaborative four-county catering managers’ group, said price was the main criteria in the tendering process in both 1998 and 2002.

“The catering managers were driven by price,” Mr Evans said, adding that quality was not given any particular weighting until 2004-05.

He admitted that no risk assessment visits were made to John Tudor & Son, which would have seen his food quality and safety procedures checked, because Mr Evans believed that the company was a “low risk supplier”, based on its status as an “incumbent supplier to the authority”.

He said, “I believed they would be safe to tender with us. If there was a problem with the produce [Trading Standards] would have informed us.

“If there was a major problem with a supplier, the local environmental health officer would have informed us.”

More than 50 complaints were recorded by schools in Rhondda Cynon Taf between January 2001 and May 2002, the period leading up to the renewal of Tudor’s contract in 2002.

These included serious complaints about food contamination and meat being off and were remarkably similar to the 40 recorded by Caerphilly schools and meals on wheels services between 1996 and 1998.

Leslie Shawcroft, a contracts manager for Catering Direct, Rhondda Cynon Taf Council’s in-house catering company, said, “The reason I compiled that list was because I didn’t feel, at that time, that Tudor should be considered as a tenderer.”

But Mr Evans, now a senior project manager in procurement for the Welsh Assembly Government, said, “They were worrying, but I believe at that time RCT was having 300 deliveries a week from Tudor and these [complaints] were made over a period of 12 to 14 months.”

He said that the other members of the catering managers’ group would have “taken these issues on board in their assessment of the offer before them”.

Mr Eadie asked, “Should this not have been more of a concern to you? After all, this was just from one authority – did anyone say, in the run-up to the award being made in 2002, that we have this schedule of complaints and is it really the position that in the other two authorities there are none?”

Mr Evans replied, “Looking in isolation, something should have come to mind at that stage.”

Mr Eadie also asked whether Mr Evans had linked these complaints to those collected by Caerphilly between 1996 and 1998 and “put two and two together”?

“I can’t recall,” he said.

It later emerged that Rhondda Cynon Taf Council had received more complaints about Tudor in the months leading up to the end of the contract in May 2005.

But the contract was automatically extended, after Tudor agreed to another year in November 2004.

Mr Evans said this was normal practice in public sector tendering.

Complaints held by Rhondda Cynon Taf to be published

The E.coli inquiry has called for all complaints held by Rhondda Cynon Taf Council’s catering company, Catering Direct, relating to John Tudor & Son, to be published.

It emerged yesterday that these records are still kept on the company’s computer system. But the only such documents the inquiry has so far received from the council, which was at the heart of the decision to continue to award Tudor lucrative supply contracts, are a series of complaint forms from 2004 to 2005.

The list of 56 complaints from Rhondda Cynon Taf schools, dated 2001 to 2002, only came to light when Leslie Shawcroft, a former Catering Direct employee, submitted evidence to the inquiry.

It also emerged yesterday that schools in the area made more complaints about Tudor’s produce in 2005, before his contract was extended for another year.

These are in addition to at least 40 complaints made by Caerphilly schools and meals on wheels services dating back to 1996; a further 19 from Bridgend school kitchens in the space of three months in 2005 alone and a whole series of complaints from Merthyr Tydfil dating back to 1998.