There is an urgent unforeseen need arising from a request from
Councillors to obtain costed surveys of the buildings. The work was
planned to be undertaken in 2022/23 but this information is now needed
to support the Medium Term Financial Strategy.

The surveys of Listed buildings are undertaken by Consultancies who
specialise in such buildings and therefore this work cannot be undertaken by Property Services.

The Listed Building survey provider has been selected on the basis of
earlier work in respect of a detailed survey and cost report of the Shirehall that was assessed as being of sound quality and providing value for money based upon benchmarking that was undertaken in March 2021.

Under the limited time available there is a clear need to be able to provide more accurate costings on work to buildings so that limited finances available to the council can be accurately targeted and prioritised.

Therefore enabling better planning for the production of a more accurate
budgeting & MTFS, through the evaluation of detailed surveys of the
council’s Listed buildings.

The service provider was benchmarked against other consultancies when commissioned to provide a separate report with similar requirements. Considering time constraints and limited internal resource and the limited field of expertise in the market it is necessary to make a direct approach to a known service provider, thereby mitigating the risk of delay in returning responses but with the assurance of previous engagement. This is a direct award that will not meet all the criteria of the CPR rules however they have been able to demonstrate value for money when previously providing a reliable and professional service. A specification has been developed taking account of key outcomes and standards to be met which the supplier will be assessed against. In the timescale available we have looked at the CCS framework but there are no providers covering this specialist service.