Dear Councillor,

On Thursday 6 December you will be taking part in a Cabinet Committee about the future of the NSCSO contract.

You are carrying out a critical role in terms of the decision to award the NSCSO contract to a preferred bidder.

In your role as a key decision maker I want to clarify that you understand the following:

• The Council is under no legal obligation to award a contract for NSCSO, and therefore councillors are entitled to vote against any recommendation in favour of a preferred bidder.

• In deciding whether to vote for or against any such recommendation, councillors are entitled not to take into account the time taken to complete the procurement process or the cost of doing so.

• In deciding whether to vote for or against any such recommendation, councillors should consider only the merits of the proposal in the interests of residents of the borough, and that factors such as the time taken to complete the procurement process, and the costs involved, are irrelevant factors.

• It would be unreasonable for councillors to allow themselves to be influenced by any consideration of costs incurred by the bidders.

• It would also be unreasonable to ignore all relevant factors and that one such factor is the strength of community opposition to the award of these contracts.

We are asking you to consider a different course of action to that being recommended by senior officers.

We ask that you recommend that Cabinet instruct the interim Chief Executive to investigate fully, as a matter of urgency, all reasonable alternative methods of delivering the Council services covered by the proposals for the NSCSO Strategic Partnership.

These should address the need to make efficiency savings and to generate income, and may include in-house options.

In addition, Cabinet committee should recommend that the current proposals for the Strategic Partnership for the New Support and Customer Services Organisation should not progress until after they have been debated by a Full Council meeting of Barnet Council.

Yours,