§ Mr. David EvansTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what action he proposed to take in regard to Doncaster metropolitan borough council under part I of the Local Government Act 1988.
§ Mr. KeyMy right hon. Friend has today issued a direction under section 14 of the Local Government Act 1988 requiring Doncaster metropolitan borough council to expose certain building cleaning work to competitive tendering again by 1 November 1991. He has taken this action because he was not satisfied with the response which Doncaster metropolitan borough council made to the notice served on 21 September 1990 under section 13 of the Act.
That notice set out the Secretary of State's view that Doncaster metropolitan borough council had acted contrary to the requirement of section 7(7) of the act (which is that, in awarding a contract, an authority must not act in a manner having the effect or intended or likely to have the effect of restricting, distorting or preventing competition) in that, in putting building cleaning work out to tender with a start date for contracts of 1 September 1990, they packaged the work and adopted a timetable for the tendering in an anti-competitive manner. The Secretary of State has decided to take no further action in the case of the so-called north, east and west area contracts. His direction relates to building cleaning work comprised in the so-called south area contract, which is the largest of the four area contracts put out to tender.