It is highly unlikely that all the criteria to be applied will be of equal importance to the Authority. A weighting system should therefore be devised to reflect their relative importance. This should be kept simple to maximise the transparency of the process. In most cases a simple percentage to be applied to the score awarded for each criterion is sufficient.
To ensure efforts are focussed on the issues that really matter to the Authority, after initial weightings have been applied there should be a further review of the criteria to identify any criteria where the weighting agreed is so low that the inclusion of the criterion is not likely to have a material impact on the relative scores.
Such criteria should be eliminated from the process and the remaining weightings adjusted to ensure they add up to 1.
The evaluation criteria and weightings must be developed and agreed by stakeholders before the options are appraised.18
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18 Once the options have been selected but before the appraisal has been conducted the evaluation criteria to be applied should be reappraised to identify any where the nature of the criterion is unlikely to allow any differentiation in the scoring of the selected options. Such criteria should either be eliminated or the weighting should be reduced.