New enabling contract for the provision of hire vehicles for the MPS

Report: 18
Date: 10 April 2003
By: Commissioner

Summary

The current contract for hire vehicles with National Car Rental expires on 31 January 2004. This report seeks MPA approval to go to Official Journal of European Communities (OJEC) competition for the replacement contract. The types of vehicles covered by this contract range from motorcycles to heavy goods vehicles, both new and second-hand. Coach hire is however excluded. This enabling contract provides a method of procuring a flexible transport resource at short notice.

A. Recommendation

That the Committee approves the proposal to go to OJEC competitive tender for a vehicle hire enabling contract with a planned contract award in late 2003.

B. Supporting information

Background

1. Short term hire The MPS uses hire vehicles to supplement temporarily its permanently leased and owned vehicle fleets. Most vehicle hire is for periods of less than a month. A recent example of a specific short-term requirement met in this way was to support the policing of the anti-war march and the concurrent security alert at Heathrow Airport when an extra 300 vehicles (minibuses and vans) were needed in the same week.

2. Longer term hire. There is also a smaller requirement for some vehicles to be hired for longer than a month to meet medium term operational requirements, e.g. Operation Trident, where the rental period can extend up to a year.

Advantages of using hire arrangements

3. Supplementing the MPS permanent vehicle fleet by hire provides an efficient way of satisfying peak and temporary demand; it reduces capital expenditure and other costs associated with the permanent fleet. The majority of vehicles hired are for covert use providing intelligence led policing with vehicles at short notice that can also be exchanged upon request to protect the integrity of an operation.

4. Vehicle hire plays an important part in providing transport to support operational policing in London. The optimum balance of the MPS vehicle fleet to be provided by hire, lease or through permanent ownership is planned to be re-assessed later this year as an early part of the work being conducted to replace the MPS's major outsource contracts.

Length of contract

5. The proposal is for the term of the contract to be two years with an option of extending for up to a further year. This period would enable vehicle hire to be considered for inclusion within the scope of the re-tendering exercise for the major transport outsource contracts that are due for replacement in April 2006.

C. Equality and diversity implications

Companies tendering for this contract will be asked to complete commercial and technical questionnaires. From these responses, we should be able to ensure that the recommended company for the award of contract has a good equality and diversity policy and a satisfactory industrial relations record. Therefore, it is not anticipated that there will be any equality or diversity issues in respect of this contract.

D. Financial implications

1. The current annual cost of vehicle hire includes the cost of collision repairs, and criminal and other damage incurred during hire. Collision repair costs are part of the expense of hiring cars as the MPS self-insures. The greater part of the vehicle hire budget is devolved to Operational Command Units but some funds are held centrally for corporately planned public order events and security operations.

E. Background papers

None.

F. Contact details

Report author: Director of Transport Services, MPS.

For more information contact:

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

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