Tender
Thurrock seeks single contractor to demolish Blackshots tower blocks
By Staff Writer | 24 August 2026
Thurrock Council has gone to tender for the demolition of the tower blocks and garages at Blackshots in Grays, Essex, with a total value recorded as 2,670,000 pounds excluding value added tax. The notice was published on 21 August 2026 under the identifier 2026/S 000-079985 and carries the council's reference PS/2026/075.
The requirement is stated in a single line on the notice. The authority's requirement under the contract is for a single contractor to undertake the demolition of the tower blocks and garages in Blackshots, Grays, Essex. The main procurement category is works and the classification is demolition, site preparation and clearance work. The contract location is recorded as Thurrock.
The estimated total value is 2,670,000 pounds excluding value added tax and 3,204,000 pounds including it, and the procurement is recorded as below the relevant threshold. Estimated contract dates run from 5 November 2026 to 3 January 2028, with a possible extension to 3 January 2029 described on the notice as two periods of six months. Both the enquiry deadline and the tender submission deadline are 18 September 2026 at 12:00pm.
The procedure is below threshold open competition. Tenders are run through the council's electronic tendering portal, registration for which the notice records as free, and tenders may be submitted electronically. The notice was published at 2:17pm on 21 August 2026 and edited at 2:45pm the same afternoon, and the service keeps the earlier version available alongside the current one.
The award criteria as published
The award criteria section of the notice reads, in full, that the award criteria is 60 per cent quality and 40 per cent. The second criterion is not named on the notice. The natural reading is price, and the split of sixty against forty in favour of quality is a common one on a demolition package, but the notice does not say so and nothing here supplies the missing word. A bidder should treat the criteria as unstated until the tender documents on the portal confirm them, because the weighting of the unnamed forty per cent is the difference between a price led and a method led competition.
What the practitioner should take from this
The single contractor requirement is the first thing to read. The authority is not splitting the tower blocks from the garages, and it is not running the demolition alongside a separate enabling or asbestos package on the same notice. One contractor carries the whole site, which puts the interfaces inside that contractor's own supply chain rather than across the employer's contracts. On a residential tower demolition, the interfaces that usually cause the argument are asbestos removal, service disconnections, party wall and neighbour protection, and the disposal route for arisings. The notice addresses none of them, and none is inferred here.
The programme is the second. Fourteen months are allowed between 5 November 2026 and 3 January 2028, with an extension mechanism of two further six month periods taking the outside date to 3 January 2029. An extension structured as two discrete six month options rather than one twelve month option is a control on when the decision to extend is taken, not merely on how long the contract can run. What triggers each option is not published.
Third, the value sits below the relevant threshold, and the procedure follows: below threshold open competition rather than a full competitive procedure. That widens the field to any firm that registers on the portal, and it shortens the timetable. A tender period closing at noon on 18 September 2026, with the enquiry deadline falling at the same moment rather than earlier, leaves no window in which a late clarification can be answered before submission. A bidder who intends to ask a question needs to ask it well before the deadline, because on the face of the notice the two deadlines coincide.
The notice does not state the number of blocks, their height, their storey count, whether they are occupied, whether asbestos surveys have been completed, or what form of contract will be used. It does not name a start on site date distinct from the contract start date. None of those gaps has been filled here, and a bidder will find them, if anywhere, in the documents released through the portal.