Condor Ferries’ finances has been repeatedly been cited as a reason for the pan-island process failing, but Simon Steele; Economic Development’s Commercial Director who is responsible for procurement, stated that the financial tests put in place by both islands, saw both Brittany Ferries (which owns Condor) and DFDS pass.
“Both evaluators, from both islands, passed Brittany Ferries on the financial evaluation,” he confirmed.
“In respect of the commercial evaluation, there were differences in the scoring between the islands. The Guernsey team scored Brittany Ferries more favorably than DFDS in respect to the commercial evaluation. And this came down to principally the certainty around the investment plan.
“As we were scoring jointly, we took an average of the two scores, and so on that basis, both the technical evaluations and the commercial evaluations, passed for both bidders based on the average scores, as set out in the evaluation criteria.”
A lot of emphasis on the plans for fleet investment, and security surrounding Brittany Ferries financials, came from ED this morning. Plus the levels of control, with the power of setting prices, schedules and protecting Guernsey people’s pockets, being made priorities.
Pictured: The Scrutiny Meeting this morning shed new light on some of the details that got swept away during the time sensitive tender process.
Steve Wakeland, the Chief Strategy and Policy Officer in the States of Guernsey, said: “I think the minimum service requirements for the service scheduling was still met.
“The only area of differences was the fleet investment plan, in particular, the return agenda. That’s is, I would say, the primary area of difference, the rest or any other differences, I don’t think are material at all, actually, to the overall service and pricing. The pricing remains the same, for example.
The President of Economic Development, Deputy Neil Inder was steadfast in his belief that Guernsey has made the right decision, reiterating that throughout this morning’s Scrutiny hearing.
“For the first time, for a long time, come January the first we will actually have a contract where we’re currently working under an MOU, so that risk has been mitigated,” he said.
“We now have a contract with a supplier, which we haven’t had, and importantly, if we’d gone down around the potential, accepting the five levers route, the risk would be shifted to the people of Guernsey and Jersey, and that that is significant. If you can start changing your scheduling, your prices and your investment, the risk changes immediately to the people of the islands, whereas under the current bid, all of that is wrapped up in a contract.
“We are not in a position to add any any weight, subjectivity, emotion, and conjecture to what is, or what has, basically gone before. That is not our role. We have to look at this as a clean sheet. Both bids came in through the door. They went through an evaluation period. Went through a moderation period. There was output and there was a decision. We gave no consideration whatsoever to what, what has what has gone before.”
Other contract details coming to light during this morning’s Scrutiny hearing included a break clause “in favour of the States” at year eight of the 15-year contract, allowing Guernsey to give two years notice to break it. It’s also been confirmed that there was no separate bid for the individual islands, rather the ‘Guernsey only service’ came as a result of the breakdown between the islands. This meant the tender process saw Brittany Ferries’ original bid “accepted in part”, said ED.
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Pictured top: The Economic Development Committee panel before the Scrutiny Committee hearing this morning.
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