Chatham House rules apply
Roundtable attendees
Adrian Tatum Hemming Group Editor Traffic and Transport
Alison Conroy Aebi Schmidt
Fraser Boyd M50
Steve Dixon Manchester City Council
Darren Corcoran Staffordshire CC
Peter Turland Doncaster BC
Mike Moore Aebi Schmidt
Richard Guy Amey
Carl Bell Tameside MBC
Dave Botfield Staffordshire CC
As with any area of local government winter maintenance has seen some important developments in recent years. Chief among these is the revised Appendix H addition to Well Maintained Highways, but of course there is also the constant threat of reduced budgets and fluctuating weather patterns that appear to be getting more and more extreme. Last winter may have been mild but there was plenty of rain, raising issues around ice and highways degradation. Of course one thing that has not changed is the importance of the men and women, the officers, decision makers, engineers and strategists behind the service that keeps us safe on the roads and keeps our country moving throughout the winter season.
Who these people are however, what uniforms they wear and how they interact with either the private or public sector is a changing landscape. With more councils using private contractors to do part or all of winter service delivery, Surveyor Transport Network in partnership with leading manufacturer Aebi Schmidt held a roundtable at the launch of this year’s Cold Comfort to analyse the changing relationship between authorities, private sector contractors and their suppliers as they seek to improve the overall delivery of winter service in the UK.
Opening remarks from attendees outlined some of the reasons why councils are choosing to outsource services but also demonstrated that there is a spectrum of outsourcing and as with so much in local government there is no a one-size-fits-all approach.
One attendee from a large council said: ‘We have been an outsourced provider for more than 10 years now. We were in-house but from our perspective this created a whole host of issues, these included machinery supply, drivers’ hours, and the cost of the service. So we went to market and have been with the same contractor ever since under various different contractual arrangements. We find it is beneficial because we can negotiate to get up to date equipment, we can get the efficiency of not losing staff overnight, we don’t have fleet maintenance issues, and these costs can be re-invested into the delivery itself and finding innovations.
‘Decision making is still in-house. Our service delivery teams from the contractor operate completely under our direction. We kept decision making in-house because of tradition really. We have invested in our knowledge-base over many years and it’s never something we really thought about outsourcing as there are no cost benefits from what we can see. We have the number of people we need, with the level of expertise required to be able to take those decisions. It’s also about loss of control, as a local authority you want to make sure the decisions being taken are right for your community. This means the liability is with us, and only goes to the contractor if they fail to maintain their contractual responsibilities.’
They added they would struggle to go back in-house and predicted more outsourcing with local authorities possibly becoming ‘large administration centres’.
Another attendee from a council which runs an in-house operation said they might consider outsourcing because of the issues around workers' hours and shift patterns, which they found are difficult to arrange in winter season considering the need for workers’ breaks. This raised the question as to whether the service might be delivered more cost effectively by private contractors with larger staff pools.
One attendee said they are currently going through a TUPE transfer arrangement with a new contractor and are entering into a partnership arrangement where decision making, and therefore risk and liability, could be shared between the council and the contractor.
‘We are already having those discussions, obviously if liability sits with the contractor in its entirety they will want to have ownership of the decision making process, and quite right too’ he said.
‘We decided to outsource because we wanted the private sector’s innovative ways of working and we wanted to bring investment in. Although a big driver was the fact our existing highways maintenance contract was ending and so we were going to have to tender the highways side anyway.’
He added the councils also has an ageing fleet which is raising more and more issues over the costs of maintenance and repairs. Another delegate agreed and said the cost of repairs as fleets get older does make it more likely they would consider outsourcing.
It was agreed that liability and risk is a key driving factor behind the nature of the arrangements between authorities and their contractors, while issues such as staffing costs, shift patterns, the need for capital investment in fleet assets and the drain on revenue funds from keeping operations in-house are issues that make councils consider outsourcing.
Attendees raised the issue of different types of payment method for winter service, with one attendee saying there are lump sum arrangements in some cases and in others payment by work done. Another attendee said the idea of a lump sum payment raised alarm bells as winter service can be so unpredictable.
There was also the issue of Appendix H, with some attendees saying it was adding to their costs as they sought to upgrade fleets to allow for spreading in more efficient 1g increments rather than the 5g increments some are still using. It was clear from attendees there is still a lot of concern and uncertainty around Appendix H and on certain issues, such as sheet covering for gritters, this left contractors as well as councils potentially exposed to risk.
An attendee from an in-house winter service authority raised the concern that outsourcing is a one-way process and once you lose control of one area, other aspects of the council’s work including wider highways services and environmental services could soon follow, leaving small councils with little left under their control.
From the contractor’s side it was suggested there was a definite commitment to keep business as usual from day one of taking over a service, so there would be no reduction in standards as new arrangements and cultures took time to bed in. It was added that while contractors would often make arrangements to upgrade the fleets being used, which was a major benefit of outsourcing, some authorities set tenders based on the fleets they have at the time. It was suggested this led contractors to ‘tailor the solution to the fleet available’ instead of producing the most efficient improvement programme.
Tendering processes and the local government culture of keeping these price driven was raised as an issue that needed to be considered by councils, contractors and manufacturers alike.
One attendee said they see many tender documents and there is a lot of ‘cut and paste procurement focused on price’. It was agreed around the table that there was an unhelpful division
