Harrogate Borough Council has blamed the pandemic and “urgent works” for a rise in the number of contracts awarded to companies without any competitive process.

An analysis of contract data by the Local Democracy Reporting Service shows the council has awarded more than £820,000 worth of contracts without seeking rival bids since April 2020 – more than the previous seven years combined.

The rise has been described as “alarming” by opposition councillors, while the Conservative-run council has defended its record saying there have been several reasons why it has bypassed its own procurement rules.

A council spokesperson said: 

The council’s rules say it must seek rival bids for contracts unless it is spending time-limited grant funding, if “specialised” services are only available from one business or for reasons of “extreme urgency”.

During the pandemic, the council used firms for repairs at Knaresborough Swimming Pool and Harrogate Convention Centre where it also hired a traffic management company whilst the centre was in use as an NHS Nightingale Hospital.

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The council has recently been forced to defend its reasons for bypassing the rules, including when it awarded a £165,000 contract to marketing firm Jacob Bailey Group to rebuild and maintain the Visit Harrogate website.

In January, the council said a bidding process for this would have taken six months to complete and that the “exceptional circumstances” of the pandemic meant the work was urgent.

It also said “very few companies in the UK have the expertise, skills or experience” to carry out the work.

In April 2020, the council awarded a £40,900 contract to landscaping firm Glendale Managed Services to repair the Stray – seven months after the parkland was damaged during Harrogate’s hosting of the UCI World Cycling Championships.

At the time, the council said there were “urgent circumstances” as the “optimum period for reseeding was fast approaching”.

The reseeding works did not start until two months later in June.

In total, more than £1.2 million worth of contracts have been awarded by the council without rival bids since 2013.

The council said it does not have any information before this as “the sourcing software the council uses does not hold records prior to 2013/2014”.

In numbers: Council contracts awarded without rival bids