Issue - meetings

Report of the Director of Placemaking and Housing. To be introduced by the Cabinet Member for Housing Services, Private Renters, and Planning.

To extend the value service of the current fire safety consultancy service by external consultants which includes support in key fire safety programmes and undertaking fire risk assessments.

The Cabinet Member for Housing Services, Private Renters and Planning introduced the report which sought approval for the variation of the existing contract value for the current provision of Fire Safety Consultancy Services to the Council, for the remaining contract term, to January 2025. This contract was needed until an in-house team was established.

In response to questions from Councillor Cawley – Harrison the following was noted:

-       Clearly there would be an increase in the number of fire safety inspections of Council homes and the Council were working to increase the number of trained Council staff able to carry out these assessments.

-       The Director for Placemaking and Housing outlined, as advised in previous Cabinet reports and to the Housing Improvement Board, that the Council had commissioned an independent review of the landlord function, following the insourcing of Homes for Haringey which included verifying data concerning fire risk assessments. This had identified a number of issues with the data compilation and the Council had put in place a number of actions to address this issue.

-       The data issues were not related to the performance of the contractor and extension of the contract was an expedient way to ensure the fire safety services continued efficiently.

RESOLVED to

1.            Approve a variation of the existing contract with Faithorn Farrell & Timms LLP for the provision of Fire Safety Consultancy Services to the Council by increasing the maximum contract value by an additional £247,500 taking the maximum contract value to £742,500 over the maximum contract period of 5 years (of which 3 years and 7 months currently remain) including the optional extension period of up to 2 further years beyond the initial 3-year contract period.

Reasons for decision

            In order to deliver the Fire Safety programmes, which includes Fire Risk Assessments, Surveys, Specifications and Schedules of Works, Reports and Quality Assurance, Haringey Council requires the support of specialist fire safety services (including Project Management; Surveying; Cost Consultancy; and Quality Management & Assurance from Competent Persons).

            The existing arrangements for this work have been in place since January 2022 and were procured as a direct award under the South East Consortium’s Fire Safety Consultancy Framework. After initially approaching the top ranked consultancy, we approached the second placed consultancy, Faithorn Farrell & Timms LLP (FFT), who were able to take on and support our service requirements.

            The consultants are and have since been successfully delivering programmes of safety inspections and surveys, critical to the safety of residents. This support is currently relied upon whilst we continue to try to recruit to existing vacancies within our team of Fire Risk Assessors and Surveyors, who would normally deliver the core elements of this work. However, due to market pressures and a shortage of suitably competent persons this is taking longer than originally anticipated.

            Even when the team is fully resourced, there will always be a need to rely upon additional consultancy services to support the in-house team through peaks in workload and gaps in resources. The procurement of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 12