The Profits of Penzance: Part Four
EXCLUSIVE: The £70 billion contract is dead, long live the £4 billion contract
In previous episodes of Two People Nominally in Penzance but Actually Nowhere Near It Feast on the Carcass of the Asset-Stripped State:
Claire Delaney and Simon Rule were said to have won a contract worth £70 billion awarded by another small-to-medium enterprise (SME) that works to stop porn being viewed on school computers plus some other stuff idk. (Plus improving digital access for young carers, which, bravo). It was called Everything Net Zero, and would have made them a clearing house for public services’ environmental improvement even though that was in no way their field of expertise.
Their ‘small’ company Place Group Ltd is Schrodinger’s SME as it’s too small for Company House audit while at the same time they brag on many millions in value connected to their various operations. These involve running a number of Michael Gove-blessed educational institutions and being the ‘middle man’ for public procurement.
These business involvements connect them, at least indirectly, to a gobsmacking global network of celebrities, feral capitalism, and criminals. Oh yeah, and the Place where those three things meet: Donald J Trump.
The ‘£70 million contract’ was quickly dismissed as Move Along Nothing To See Here even by Full Facts, then was dropped by its awarder East of England Broadband Network (E2BN) after the Good Law Project went all judicial review on their arses. My spidey senses couldn’t let it go, but my 2022 exposé of the wild stories-behind-the-story from the Sunset Strip to Sarawak went almost entirely unnoticed, and the drive for Net Zero was placed in safer hands.
Or was it?? Dun dun dunnnnnnn. Because this bit, from Part Three last week? Rang alarm bells with me for years, but I didn’t listen, did I? …
I originally wrote that almost exactly three years ago, while catsitting in Paris. I’m now sitting at the same desk with the same ancient, ludicrously-loud-at-530-am cat, examining what our old pals Delaney and Rule have been up to lately.
And guess what? Go on, have a guess. You’ll never guess. Place Group Ltd is after all involved in exactly the sorts of things the £70 million ‘cancelled’ framework contract outlined. They’ve just folded it into their pre-existing Everything FM contract with E2BN instead. They must be laughing their wallets off.
Leave them alone, Rachel, they’re just making honest money in a canny way, you might say. Sure. But I have ish-yous with this, and perhaps you might, too.
Tendering, procurement, and transparency
This clear commentary by commercial law firm Muckle LLP explains why the challenge to the £70 billion framework contract by the Good Law Project, settled in late 2022, was important.
“Framework agreements set out terms under which a public body may purchase goods or services without further open tender. When contracts are awarded through the agreement, the usual rules about open advertisement and competition do not apply.”
“The award of the contract would have allowed Place Group the opportunity to control how projects aimed at reducing the country’s carbon emissions were tendered from the entire public sector.”
“Place Group would essentially would become a middleman and a neutral vendor, responsible for matching companies who can sub-contract on green projects with local councils, schools and hospitals. A powerful position for a company that had a total of two employees.”
E2BN awarded another framework called Everything ICT to a firm called WCL (UK) Ltd. It does love this Everything Something recipe. (It seems to be a thing. There’s an unrelated Everything Water & Energy knocking about). But who is it to be awarding such ‘agreements’, and what does it get out of it?
As noted above, it awarded Everything FM – your multi-decade multi-genre music station! You’d think – to ‘Place Group trading as Schools' Buying Club’ in 2020. It was to expire on 17 August 2024. (Also that month, E2BN Protex Ltd t/a Internet4schools was acquired by Talk Straight Ltd). Interestingly, according to the government’s ‘contract finder’ website, Place Group was not then an SME. (Here’s a decent explanation of what FM, facilities management, actually is). Schools Buying Club has ceased to operate on the Companies House website but is still listed as ‘to present’ on Claire Delaney’s LinkedIn page.
As of today, ‘Place Group incorporating Everything FM’ is said on the interwebs to be partnered with Total Estate and Energy Asset Management (TEEAM), “an alliance of industry-leading organisations established to deliver the UK’s decarbonisation agenda and ensure net zero targets are met.”
The TEEAM website says:
“Place Group is a specialist Project Management and School Services Company with 20 years’ experience of successfully managing public sector development and efficiency programmes. Place Group operates the Everything FM procurement framework designed specifically to deliver time-pressured contracts, meet net zero targets and realise community ambitions.”
When Place Group won the Everything FM framework contract, it was under the same conditions and through the same awardee that the later Everything Net Zero agreement was – before E2BN dropped that in the face of a legal challenge. It claims “Place Group Ltd secured the contract through a competitive tender process to operate the Everything FM framework”, but where’s the transparency?
Well, they nearly won a prize once, anyway, I guess.
So the same concerns outlined by Muckle LLP above apply, yet in that earlier – ‘only’ £4 billion – case it went ahead. And it’s still apparently operating, despite the framework ending last year?
Schrodinger’s framework
The [crappy, web-2.0-ass-looking] Everything FM website has a banner added, date unknown, stating that “This version of the framework has now closed.” But this is followed by “If you have any questions regarding your procurement requirements please don’t hesitate to contact us”, the site is very much live, as is its LinkedIn page, and the ‘alliance’ with TEEAM appears to be ongoing. The site’s blog hasn’t been updated since May 2024, but its live chat is still, well, live.
Loads of firms are still stating that they’re an “approved supplier for several procurement framework providers such as Everything ICT and Everything FM”. This is an efficient approach by E2BN, btw – I imagine that suppliers only have to go through an approval process once, but can join (at least) two frameworks?
Anyway: if Delaney and Rule as Place Group Ltd Incorporating Everything FM are still middlemanning away, on what basis is that? The BidStats site says delivery goes up to Christmas Day 2025, but that’s estimated.
Place Group and its approved Everything FM suppliers have often mentioned ‘compliance’, as in it being a “compliant public sector framework”, but compliance with what? I assume they meant the Public Contracts Regulations 2015? But the GLP sought judicial review of the Everything Net Zero contract award precisely because it believed there might not have been compliance, and E2BN folded rather than defend it.
The Place Group website says, “From July 2021, we will contribute to the value of 0.5% to 1.5% of our income to supporting local schemes that deliver important social impact, focused on educating young people about sustainability, decarbonisation to meet net zero targets, and how they can deliver change and develop careers in green industries.” Did it? What were the outcomes?
Why were Delaney and Rule projects Schools Buying Club and Everything FM apparently intertwined, and did that create any conflicts of interest?
How is such a small company, also also involved in running multiple London schools, also also also able to make and run yet another Everything FM agreement with Barts Health NHS Trust in 2023, worth £9 million? Or am I being dense about something here?
Does Delaney and Rule’s Bellevue Place Education Trust (BPET) use Everything FM for its Net Zero drive, and if so, how would that work? I’m genuinely asking, not implying – though as I outlined in Part Two they have form in mixing it up.
As another example, the Place Group site says “We are currently working with the Department for Education, as part of the Barker Alliance, to deliver the Net Zero Accelerator Pathway Programme, a key initiative in the Government’s drive to reach net zero in education by 2030.” But on its BPET site it says “The programme works with 50 schools across the UK, and we are thrilled to share that eight BPET schools have been included.” I haz a confuse.
Barker, by the way, is part of TEEAM, because of course it is.
I know I’m asking more questions than I’m answering here. But as someone with a PhD in Law and Social Policy and with Autistic Authority Problem Syndrome ™️ I just keep seeing a lot of power and profit happening, and would like more transparency about their bestowal and parameters. We’re talking, after all, about the use of public money.
A convenient situation
Given what happened with the Everything Net Zero framework, you’ll forgive my instinct to side-eye Place Group’s offer to help others navigate the changes required by the new regime of the Procurement Act 2023.
The Stotles website says that Place Group Ltd has had five awards from E2BN but sadly I don’t currently have a company email address to create an account to have a poke about, only Gmails. Do let me know if you are able to have a gander.
Back in 2020, the GLP said:
“Good Law Project filed a judicial review in August as we believe the award of the contract was unlawful. We demanded E2BN be transparent about the deal and fill in the gaps left behind. In response to our legal action, E2BN has now pulled the billion-pound framework agreement with Place Group, citing 'commercial expediency' in the face of a potential trial.”
“Why was E2BN allowed to write such a poor framework agreement and hand it to Place Group – a company whose focus is in education, with seemingly little experience in reducing emissions? How is it Place Group ended up being the only business to submit a tender for the right to administer the framework?”
“On the face of it, E2BN appeared to have created a convenient situation in which Place Group were given oversight over contracts worth as much as half the size of the NHS’s annual allowance, and was able to award contracts loosely based on climate issues to unspecified suppliers without the proper open, transparent or fair competition. It stressed to us it does not have any interests tied to Place Group.”
“Framework agreements set out terms under which a public body may purchase goods or services without further open tender. When contracts are awarded through the agreement, the usual rules about open advertisement and competition do not apply.”
“This ‘Everything Net Zero’ agreement would have allowed Place Group the opportunity to control how projects aimed at reducing the country’s carbon emissions were tendered from the entire public sector – from local government offices to the NHS. The figures were huge and the rules were loose – practically open-ended in the kinds of services that might be bought under it.”
Yet this appears to be what has happened anyway, under a conveniently extant Other Everything Framework Agreement, Everything FM. When it comes to the climate emergency, this just isn’t good enough – for me, anyway. I’m currently reaching out to the Good Law Project for comment and will keep you posted.
Look, it may be that loads of companies operate in this way, and may seem like I’m picking on this one. But, again, public money. It should all be as clear as plate glass, but it just isn’t. And it serves them right – £4 billion, then £70 billion, I ask you! ‘Framework’ or not.
Place Group still has just two directors, Delaney and Rule, who are also the ‘persons of significant control’ of the company. It’s hard to gauge their employee numbers; LinkedIn says 11-50. You can see their accounts to the end of 2023 here, and note that, as ‘a small company’, they don’t have to do much of anything with respect to Companies House.
The Everything FM website alone states that it has had “5,500+ public sector customers” and “£300m+ contracts under management”.