A letter from UrbanGrowth dated 29 July 2016 responded to the CA lawyer’s letter dated 10 June 2016 outlining CA concerns with the services provided by Pivit.
To summarise:
- Urban Growth does not want to get involved in the dispute between the CA and Pivit and suggests that the CA engages directly with Pivit, and the Network Management Services Agreement be transferred from UrbanGrowth to the CA.
- Urban Growth intends to forward the 10 June letter to Pivit unless requested not to.
- The lawyer advised that, on balance, he believes the CA should allow UrbanGrowth to send the letter to Pivit because Pivit may pay more attention to the CA’s concerns knowing that UrbanGrowth is (somewhat) involved.*
* Note: The 10 June letter has been publicly available on this website for some months. It’s therefore highly likely that Pivit has already read the letter. - The lawyer does not believe there is any point in organising a meeting between the CA and Urban Growth because Urban Growth has made it clear that it does not want to get involved in the dispute between the CA and Pivit.
- The lawyer does believe there is merit in pursuing Urban Growth’s suggestion for it to transfer the NMSA to the CA because doing so will give the CA a contractual relationship with Pivit and, therefore, give the CA the right to enforce the terms of the agreement against Pivit.
- The CA’s lawyer has previously advised the CA on the merits of Urban Growth transferring the NMSA to it – see letter of advice dated 11 May 2016.
A major issue is, of course, the lack of availability of choice of provider for Prince Henry residents. Clause 6 of the NSMA: ‘Third Party Service Providers’ clearly states that Pivit:
- ‘…will provide wholesale access to third party service providers of Wholesale Customer Connection Services’
- ‘will not impose a fee or charge for access to the Network to any third party provider of Wholesale Connection Services’.
In addition, the federal governments ‘Adequately served policy‘, which applies to Prince Henry, states ‘Households can still choose their own retail service provider‘. This is clearly not happening.
The CA EC has been liaising with Pivit and Urban Growth for some considerable time, both directly and through its lawyer, and has tried in vain to find out:
- why Pivit is not meeting the terms of the NMSA in respect of third party service providers
- why Urban Growth is not insisting on Pivit meeting its contractual obligations.
The CA Executive Committee has instructed its lawyer to request Urban Growth to provide an unredacted copy of the NMSA. This will enable the EC to determine the merits of the Urban Growth proposal to transfer or novate its interests in that Agreement to the CA. The lawyer will also request a meeting be arranged for the CA EC to discuss its concerns with Urban Growth as well as the potential transfer or novation of the Agreement to the CA.
The EC will then consider the facts, discuss the options and present its recommendation for discussion and determination at the annual general meeting on 13 December 2016.
