Southwark approved £62.7m of electrical work more than two years after it began

Southwark Council approved two electrical contract extensions covering £62.7m of spending after the work had been done, the first of them more than two years after the period it covered began.

The Cabinet Member for Council Homes approved the first on 25 July 2025, for the period 1 April 2023 to 31 August 2025, and the second on 18 December 2025, for 1 September 2025 to 31 January 2026. The report to councillors states: "Both approvals were retrospective decisions".

Contract A in the north of the borough went to BCS (Electrical and Building) Ltd in 2018 at an estimated £1.85m a year, and Contract B in the south to Spokemead Maintenance Ltd at £1.53m. The report puts actual and projected spending across the two extension periods at £29.87m and £32.85m.

Officers gave the reason. The electrical compliance programme "expanded significantly following the council's self-referral to the Regulator in June 2024", and resources went to inspections rather than "progressing the re-procurement activity".

Southwark's contract standing orders require every retrospective contract decision worth more than £100,000 to reach the audit, governance and standards committee. Four such reports have reached it, across the two meetings that carried them.

On 19 November 2025 the committee took two. One covered a 12-month extension of the council's print management contract with Corporate Document Services, approved on 24 June 2025, four months after it began on 28 February, at an estimated £690,399.

That report states the extension "was significantly delayed due to resourcing issues within CFM", and that "The CFM Procurement Manager post had been vacant for over 12 months". The supplier "agreed to continue to deliver the services under the terms of the existing agreement whilst awaiting a formal contract extension".

The second covered two housing adaptations contracts, extended for 15 months from 1 March 2025 and approved on 7 October, adding £1.625m. The Smoke reported this week that Southwark is now due to extend those same two contracts by a further five months, after a notice stating they "expired on 31 July 2026".

The 3 February 2026 meeting took the communal lighting report and one other, on an emergency award of the integrated community equipment service to Provide Equipment Hub at £3.75m a year. The previous supplier entered liquidation on 1 August 2025.

The committee's other agendas carry no such item. Its meetings on 3 February, 17 May, 2 June, 14 July and 8 September 2025, and on 13 July 2026, list none.

The 2 June 2025 minutes record the committee agreeing to "move retrospective approval on communal lighting to September 2025". It did not appear that September, and reached the committee in February 2026.

Lambeth's Cabinet Member for Children and Young People is due to approve a £5.675m, 25-month extension of the council's SEND bus contract with London Hire on 20 August. The extension period began on 1 July, and The Smoke reported that decision this week.

The Deputy Leader is due to approve a two-year digital customer platform contract with IEG4 Ltd worth £1,013,704 the same day. It runs from 1 June 2026 and can be called in until 27 August, meaning councillors can refer it to a scrutiny committee before it takes effect.