Wednesday, 4 July 2012

Church Farmhouse Museum Clearance - just get shot of it

Barnet Council are obviously in a hurry to clear the Church Farmhouse Museum. They must have found a buyer. In today's Delegated Powers Report it sets out the clearance and auction company they are going to use:

Auction Plus carries out both clearance and auction and will remove everything, including excess furniture. All items will be entered to the sale. Unsold Lots are automatically re-entered into a following sale. Items then not sold can be returned at request or disposed of free of charge in an appropriate manner. Their estimate of the auction value of the contents was up to £25,000 with a 20% commission. The company guarantees complete clearance of the entire contents, repeat entry into resale of items that do not achieve sale at first offering and subsequent ethical disposal without any further risk or cost, thus having the additional benefit of saving on the additional costs that would be required to clear and dispose of excess furniture,
fittings and rubbish.

They did not chose Company A even though they were proposing only 12.5% commission because their "reputation is built upon selling fine art and antique items with the attendant risk that the wrong buying audience may be reached. The Council would be liable for the cost of disposal or return of objects that remain unsold with consequent likelihood that receipts from the sale could be heavily eroded with unpredictable final costs for storage and secondary disposal".

I am surprised they just didn't hire a skip. So much for culture and heritage in Barnet.
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3 comments:

  1. Mr Mustard4 July 2012 at 20:09

    Did we have a museum that was not filled with antique items - as always Barnet fudge the issue in order to use their favoured supplier

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  2. Mrs Angry4 July 2012 at 22:33

    I think they did hire a skip, Mr R, when they first closed the museum. Citizen Barnet saw, as I recall.

    At a council meeting last year leader Richard Cornelius dismissed the contents of the museum as being of 'no value'.

    In Tory Barnet the intrinsic value of heritage and history has no meaning.

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  3. Anonymous10 July 2012 at 22:06

    I think Mr Mustard is missing the point? Whilst I dont know who Company A are. The report implies that they had a number of hidden & un-quatifiable costs that may or may not have left the council out of pocket. Reading the report, they seem to have gone for the one they chose because firstly they cleared everything including the furniture and rubbish etc, without cherry picking the better items and appear to have a guranteed overall cost. Am I missing the point here or is our council not supposed to safeguard our money by not selecting a contractor that could leave them open to unknown charges?

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