Special Services Agreement for the Provision of a Safer Transport Command

Report: 8
Date: 10 June 2010
By: Assistant Commissioner Territorial Policing on behalf of the Commissioner
Linked to exempt item 10

Summary

Following a comprehensive joint review undertaken in 2008, it was agreed to integrate all of the safer transport policing activities funded by Transport for London in one Command in Territorial Policing. Accordingly, the new Agreement consolidates the previous Special Services Agreements for the Transport OCU, Safer Transport Teams (STT) and Hub Teams (Operation Tyrol) and incorporates the "Bike Safe" and "London Safety Camera Partnership" activities, also previously governed by separate agreements.

In 2010/11 Transport for London (TfL) will fund, in the sum of £88.5m, 1,748 personnel within the new Safer Transport Command (STC). In addition, the MPS is contributing 535 FTE personnel, including Special Police Constables, in the sum of £21.5m.

The new Agreement has been developed following an extensive period of negotiation between TfL and the MPS. The MPS group incorporated cross Business Group representation from Territorial Policing, Finance Services, Procurement Services, Human Resources and expert legal advice. The MPA have been kept informed of the progress of these negotiations through the Deputy Treasurer.

Aside from changes needed to give effect to the consolidation of the various existing special services agreements, the new Agreement is in substantially the same form as the previous Transport OCU agreement as regards key areas such as service standards/operational discretion, payment terms, liability risk allocation and termination. However, some additional constraints now apply to the recovery from TfL of liabilities arising out of provision of the special services, including a cap on TfL's liability of £75m per claim event or series of related events.

A. Recommendations

1. That the Resources and Productivity Sub-committee and the Finance and Resource Committee approve in principle the Section 25 Special Services Agreement between the MPA and Transport for London.

Note: the Agreement has been approved by the TfL Board and that formal sealing of the Agreement will take place after MPA approval has been obtained.

B. Supporting information

1. The following paragraphs describe the background and context of the existing agreement, and how the proposed new contract differs from the current one.

2. The provision of Policing Services to TfL by the MPS has been provided since 2002 under a Special Services Agreement under Section 25 (s.25) of the Police Act 1996.

3. Negotiations have been taking place with TfL since June 2009 on the new contract. Provisional agreement on the main principles of the new contract, subject to approval of the MPA and TfL, has now been reached.

4. The new agreement is scheduled to take effect retrospectively from 1 April 2010 (when the STC became operational) and will be the subject of a post-implementation review by the parties before April 2011, and a further review within three months of the end of the Olympic (including the Paralympic) Games in 2012. If the Agreement is still subsisting on the fifth anniversary of the Effective Date the parties will undertake a further, comprehensive, review of the operation and effectiveness of this Agreement.

5. Either party may at any time serve on the other Notice to terminate the Agreement on a date not less than 12 months after the date of service of such Notice.

6. The Safer Transport Command comprises a total of 1,748 special police services personnel fully funded by TfL together with 535 FTE personnel (Auxiliary Resources) provided by the MPS. Of the total number of 2,283 personnel, over 1,200 of these personnel form Safer Transport and Hub Teams based in each Borough.

7. Separate to the s.25 Agreement, TfL has previously entered into a s.93 Agreement with MPS to fund, in the sum of £4.3m, the recruitment, training and equipping of 1,200 Special Police Constables to be deployed, together with a further 400 existing Special Police Constables for safer transport purposes. The forecast position in 2010/11 is that 2/3rds of the total number will have been recruited (1,066) which equates to a full time equivalent of 213 officers.

8. The Operational Commander (currently Cmdr. Mark Gore) has ultimate control and direction for all operational matters relating to the personnel comprising the STC including those resources deployed to Boroughs which are locally led and managed. Further, in the joint review undertaken in 2008, TfL requested that the MPS nominate the Operational Commander STC to act as a single point of contact with whom they could also liaise in regard to all other special services provided to TfL, i.e. London Safety Camera Partnership and Bikesafe.

9. The Agreement makes provision for the parties to prepare plans to police the Olympic Route Network using resources available to the Safer Transport Command.

Environmental implications

10. There are no environmental impacts.

C. Race and equality impact

1. There is no race or diversity aspect as a result of this contract.

D. Financial implications

1. The new contract has been negotiated with adherence to a number of key financial principles designed to promote consistency of cost recovery between all of the MPS third party contracts. The overriding principle is that the MPS will operate all of the third party contracts under the principle of full cost recovery. This has been stressed in the contract negotiation with TfL and negotiations have progressed on the basis that TfL is required to pay the full cost of those services provided. Furthermore, the principle of full cost recovery is reflected in the provisions of the agreement in relation to the consequences of termination of the agreement (including the consequences of any "partial" termination arising from TfL budget reductions). By their nature s.25 contracts cannot be operated at a loss and therefore should the above circumstances transpire TfL will under the agreement have responsibility for compensating the MPA for the cost of continuing to employ personnel for a period of time after their involvement in delivering the special services has come to an end, pending their redeployment by the MPA. This responsibility also extends to the cost of making relevant personnel redundant if they cannot be redeployed.

2. The results of the negotiations in respect of the new contract are in line with the budgeting assumptions included within the 2010-13 MPS Business Plan.

3. In 2010/11 Transport for London (TfL) will fund, in the sum of £88.5m, 1,748 personnel within the new Safer Transport Command (STC). In addition, the MPS is contributing 535 FTE personnel, including Special Police Constables, in the sum of £21.5m.

4. The new agreement also extends the scope of the special services to be provided to TfL to incorporate the "Bike Safe" and "London Safety Camera Partnership" activities previously governed by separate s.25 agreements with TfL. Cost recovery for these services will work on the same basis as for the other services, but the budgets for these services will be additional to, and ring-fenced from, the £88.5m Safer Transport Command budget for 2010/11. At the time of writing, detailed provisions relating to the separate treatment of these budgets have yet to be prepared and agreed.

5 The budget and contract for 2010/11 reflects the following financial features of significant note:

• Recovery of overhead costs - an internal review of support costs (corporate overheads) to ensure consistency of treatment across all third party contracts was undertaken, and the revised figures were accepted by TfL and incorporated as part of the contract negotiations. Accordingly, in 2010/11 the sum of £9.9m will be recovered from TfL as a contribution to corporate overheads; a sum comparable to that recovered in 2009/10.
• Special Police Constables - as referred to in Para. B.7 above, TfL have provided separate funding, under a s.93 Agreement for the recruitment, training and equipping of Special Police Constables to be deployed on the surface transport network.
• Annual Contract Review - the contractual costs will be subject to annual review prior to setting the budget for the following year.

E. Legal implications

Contained in exempt appendix 1 .

F. Background papers

• None

G. Contact details

Report authors: Cmdr. Mark Gore, MPS

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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