Decision details

East Sussex County Council (ESCC) is taking action to provide sufficient places for the increases in pupils with Special Education Needs (SEN) and particularly the demand for special school places and high cost independent placements. This includes the construction of a new special school in Hailsham. The new school will be built to accommodate 80 pupils, ages 4 – 16 years old.

The tender received six bids and although some contractors came through with more competitive prices, their overall scores from all three elements combined (Quality, Commercial & Social Value) did not exceed Wilmott Dixon’s and this resulted in their rejection.

It was decided that the tender should be awarded to Wilmott Dixon Construction Ltd using the Orbis Construction Framework (Option 1) as they had the most economically advantageous tender of all six contractors.

Option 2: Restricted tender

This would allow for more competition than through the currently developed framework, however it would greatly extend the timeframe for delivering this project and does not guarantee a better value outcome for the project.

Option 3: Do nothing

This would lead to ESCC losing its use of the land on which the school would be build and would put more pressure on the schools in East Sussex to take on Special Educational needs pupils that they may not have the resources to provide an adequate education for.

Option 4: Use of another Construction Framework:

There are other frameworks available but there is no comparable benchmarking to suggest this would provide any greater value for money, additionally it does not meet our stated aims of using the Orbis frameworks as our preferred routes to market.