Issue - meetings

Approval was sought to appoint a Project Team to commence a procurement exercise and develop a detailed business case to commission a Highways, Transport and Environmental Professional Consultancy Services Partnership contract to support the delivery of a wide variety and volume of highway, transport and other works in the Council’s capital programme.

Over the past few years, the Council had seen a significant increase in Government funding for the highways capital programme and major projects. Simultaneously, it had experienced shortages in staff leading to a backlog in delivery of the programme.

The Council had initiated a new recruitment drive to address the large number of vacancies within the service and had engaged with a wide variety of alternative providers to identify the options available to increase support to the in-house service. The Council was also utilising a wider range of different national and regional frameworks which would enable the Council, in the short-term, to commission more projects to be designed from its capital programme

The Council’s preferred option was for an in-house service plus “top-up” arrangements with an external long term partner that better integrated external resources in supporting the in-house service so as to make a future long-term partnership and procurement exercise successful, the form of contract chosen, needed to be as an attractive as possible to prospective partners.  The procurement exercise was likely to take up to 18 months with a target start date of April 2023.  A Project Team and board would be appointed to develop the project, procurement process and final business case to commission the best partner for the Council.

RESOLVED – to (1) authorise the Executive Director - Place to commence the procurement exercise to commission a Highways, Transport and Environmental Professional Consultancy Services Partnership to support the Council in delivering its capital programme; (2) authorise the Executive Director - Place to approve the appointment of a Project Team to undertake the procurement exercise and develop a detailed business case to commission a Highways, Transport and Environmental Professional Consultancy Services Partnership; and (3) note that following completion of the tender process, Cabinet will be requested to approve the award of contract to the preferred bidder.