Contract award
Wirral awards drainage asset survey as two notices disagree on value
By Staff Writer | 21 August 2026
Wirral Council published a contract award notice on 21 August 2026 naming Kaarbon Technology Ltd for a survey and cleansing contract covering the whole of the council's highway drainage asset inventory. The award notice records a value of 6,000,000 pounds excluding tax. The tender notice published under the same procurement reference in March 2026 recorded 600,000 pounds. Both figures stand on the official record and neither is reconciled here.
The requirement is described in both notices in the same terms: a baseline survey and assessment of the council's entire drainage asset inventory, the cleansing of at risk drainage assets, and the development of a risk based model informed by multiple data points collected through detailed assessment of condition and other factors.
The competition was run as an open procedure under the Procurement Act 2023. Five tenderers are named on the award notice, and every one of them is recorded as a small or medium sized enterprise: Larkins Environmental Services Limited, Lucion Survey Ltd, Retroserve Ltd, Land Survey Solutions Ltd and Kaarbon Technology Ltd, which appears as both tenderer and supplier. Tenders closed at midday on 6 April 2026. The award is dated 12 August 2026, assessment summaries were sent on the same day, and signature is scheduled for 1 September 2026.
The award notice gives a contract period of 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2028. The tender notice gave 1 May 2026 to 30 April 2028 for the same lot. The award criteria published at tender stage were quality at 50 per cent, price at 40 per cent and social value at 10 per cent.
Four differences run between the two notices, which share the buyer's own procurement reference. The value moves from 600,000 pounds excluding tax and 720,000 pounds including tax at tender stage to 6,000,000 pounds excluding tax and 7,200,000 pounds including tax at award. The classification moves from survey services to ground drainage work, and the main category at award is recorded as works rather than services. The contract period moves by four months at each end. The award notice also marks the contract as below threshold while recording a value of 6,000,000 pounds.
What the practitioner should take from this
The first point is that an award notice value is a figure the contracting authority records, not a proof of what will be paid. It can be a maximum, an estimate or the tendered sum, and it warrants nothing. Anyone relying on a notice figure to price a market or to argue about scope should say which notice it came from and at what stage, because as this pair shows the same procurement can carry more than one number.
The second point is that where two notices under one reference disagree, the disagreement is itself a fact to record rather than a puzzle to solve. Nothing published states which figure is right. It is not for a reader to reconcile them, and it is not done here. A bidder or a supply chain member who needs to know which figure governs should ask the authority in writing and keep the answer.
The third point is the threshold marking. Whether a contract is above or below threshold decides which duties under the Procurement Act 2023 apply to it, including which notices must be published and what the authority must do at each stage. The record here carries a value in the millions alongside a below threshold marking. That combination is worth noticing on any notice, because the procedural obligations that follow are not the same in each case.
The fourth point is the gap between the two dates on the record. The award is dated 12 August 2026 and the assessment summaries were sent on the same day, but the award notice did not appear until 21 August. An unsuccessful tenderer is told how its bid was scored by the assessment summary, not by the notice, so the nine days between them are days a supplier watching for the notice would have spent waiting for a document it had already been sent. Whatever periods apply to a particular procurement, they are not started by the arrival of a notice a reader happens to see.
The fifth point is practical rather than procedural. A baseline survey of an entire drainage asset inventory produces the condition record on which later maintenance liability and flooding arguments will be tested for years. The value of the exercise to the authority is the evidence it creates, and the value to a claims practitioner is that a dated condition record now exists. Whether it is complete, and what it does not cover, is not published, and nothing about its scope beyond the wording of the notices is stated here.