Amid warnings of a third wave of Covid infections in the U.K., fuelled largely by the fear of the Indian Delta variant and, of course, the prospect of new variants, such as the one recently discovered in Russia, Westminster City Council has advertised a new contract opportunity for the construction of “temporary body storage facilities” in the event of an “excess deaths situation”. Here is some of the information provided on the Gov.uk website.
The Authority seeks to procure a framework agreement for temporary body storage in the event of an excess deaths situation for the 32 London boroughs and the City of London, led by Westminster City Council. The framework agreement will appoint a single provider and will be for a period of four years. This will be a contingency contract, only called upon in the event that an excess deaths situation arises in the future and existing local body storage capacity needs to be augmented.
The over-arching aim of this tender is to provide a single framework supplier that will be able to provide temporary body storage facilities to house deceased in the event of an excess deaths situation. The deceased will be stored with dignity and respect, at locations to be determined based on local London needs at the time and will require some design elements to accommodate local site conditions and constraints, while being capable of rapid deployment, construction and commissioning to an agreed standard. This framework will be procured by the Authority as the pan-London lead, but all London local authorities may call off against the framework.
This will be a contingency cover framework and as such, there is no minimum guarantee of any level of spend or call-off under the framework agreement.
The Council estimates that the total value of this contract (excluding VAT) will be around £6 million and it is not set for renewal. But how likely is it that this is just another local government overreaction?
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