Bristol City Council breaks rules on awarding contracts 200 times

Bristol City Council says it will provide more training and introduce a new procurement policy

Bristol City Council broke rules on awarding contracts for goods and services more than 200 times in the last year, a report has revealed.

A report by external auditors Grant Thornton found almost one in seven contracts that were awarded breached regulations in 2021/22.

Auditors told the council to address the issue urgently as it could be a sign of an increased risk of fraud.

The council said more training and a procurement policy will be introduced.

There were 203 occasions in 2021/22 where re-tendering procedures were not followed correctly, to the value of £69m, according to Grant Thornton's report.

The number has risen from 94 procurement breaches to the value of £14m last year.

'Bit of a surprise'

"The overall level of breaches in both years is higher than we would expect and the increase and final value in 2021/22 is of some note," the report said.

"Breaches...reduce transparency and fairness of decision making, which can increase the risk of fraud, conflicts of interest and reputational damage," the council's audit committee was told.

Bristol City Council's finance director Denise Murray told the meeting the high number of instances was "a bit of a surprise to us".

The council said it had accepted a recommendation to introduce a procurement strategy, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).

"Procurement compliance training will be more widely rolled out and actual compliance activity reported quarterly to audit committee via internal audit," it added.