Tender

Two Welsh councils tender 30 million pound coal tip contract

By Staff Writer  |  27 August 2026

Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council, acting with Torfaen County Borough Council, has invited tenders for a three year term service contract for coal spoil tip maintenance across sites in both boroughs. The contract carries a value of 30,000,000 pounds excluding value added tax and 36,000,000 pounds including it. The notice, identifier 081222-2026, was published on 26 August 2026 at 12:18pm and tenders close at noon on 28 September 2026.

The contract period runs from 2 November 2026 to 5 November 2029, with a maximum extent date of 3 November 2031. The notice records a renewal of two years, to be reviewed annually and dependent upon Welsh Government funding. The procedure is an open procedure under the Procurement Act 2023.

The councils state that the works consist of earthworks, drainage and other ancillary works as remedial measures, for example works involving cleansing of existing watercourses and re-lining or the construction of new ones. The classifications attached to the notice name coal-tip management services alongside works for complete or part construction and civil engineering work.

A maintenance programme with an emergency arm

The notice describes two kinds of work under one contract. The first is a prescribed programme of maintenance carried out through the year, where weather conditions allow. The second is ad hoc remedial measures following periods of severe adverse weather, where immediate remedial measures are required.

Those two obligations pull in opposite directions on a schedule of rates. Planned earthworks and watercourse cleansing can be programmed, priced and resourced. Reactive work after severe weather arrives without notice, in the conditions least suited to working on a saturated slope, and it is the same rates that will be applied to it. How the contract handles standby, mobilisation and out of hours working is therefore the provision to read first, and the notice does not publish it.

The contractor is wanted before the design

The councils state that the contractor will be required to assist Blaenau Gwent and Torfaen Councils in the planning stages, meaning co-ordination and programming, as well as offering expertise in respect of buildability and preferred treatments. That is early contractor involvement written into a term maintenance contract rather than bought separately, and it puts the appointed firm in the room while treatments are being chosen rather than after.

It also shapes where risk sits. A contractor advising on preferred treatments and then executing them has a harder argument that an unsuitable treatment was imposed on it. Whether the contract separates the advisory role from the construction role, and on what standard of care each is performed, is not something a contract notice records.

Price at seventy per cent

Award is on technical quality at 30 per cent, assessed through a series of method statement questions, and commercial at 70 per cent, assessed through a schedule of rates. Selection criteria for both economic and technical standing are stated as being per the tender documentation. The framework is recorded as suitable for small and medium sized enterprises and for voluntary, community and social enterprises. Documents are administered through the Etenderwales portal, and the notice states that all documents have been uploaded to enable direct access following registration.

A seventy per cent price weighting on a schedule of rates rewards sharp rates on the items the councils expect to order. On a contract where a material share of the work is reactive and unquantified, the rates that matter most may be the ones least exercised in the pricing exercise. The notice publishes no bill of quantities, no site list and no indication of how the 30,000,000 pound value divides between the two boroughs or between planned and reactive work.

What the notice does make plain is the funding position. The two year extension is expressly conditional on Welsh Government funding and is to be reviewed annually. A tenderer pricing on the assumption of a five year run is pricing on a condition the councils have already said they do not control. The committed term is three years; everything beyond 5 November 2029 depends on money that has not been confirmed on the record.