Stirling Council has apparently invited 114 design consultancies to pitch for the layout of a quarterly business newsletter; which has a £50,000 budget over three years.

The move seems to have reinforced fears in the creative industries about speculative pitching in the public sector reaching endemic proportions.

One consultancy, which was invited to take part, declined via an open letter which The Drum publishes in this issue. Written by Victor Brierley and addressed to Joelie Russell at the Council it stated: “We won’t be taking part. Over 100 people, all being asked to supply a bit of simple, template design, for a project you already have done in the past, with The Write People? Eh? Why not just appoint The Write People again and save your guys (and 100 people in our industry) a good deal of time, effort and money.”

Nick Ramshaw, former chair of the Design Business Association in Scotland, and now managing director of Elmwood in Leeds, is also concerned about the growth of this form of pitching.

Also writing in this issue, in response to the leader The Drum published last month, he said: “Agencies meed to say ‘no’ more often. No, if the pitch list is ridiculously long. No to giving away their thinking for free. No, when asked to pitch for very small jobs.”
The row comes on top of rumour that a Glasgow based arts organisation asked five design companies to pitch for a project that had no fee budget at all. “It was a complete insult,” said one of the organisations involved.

Meanwhile, Stirling Council said they had to put this project out to tender because it exceeded the £10,000 threshold that would allow them to make an appointment without a pitch under procurement law.