Special meeting planned as Rother prepares to turn back clock

The cabinet will be recommended by director of services Tony Leonard on Monday to recommend the council that when the present deal with a private contractor expires at the end of March the work should be undertaken by a small in-house team.

The authority has already taken benefits administration back in-house.

Rother managed its own building repairs, including housing stock, until the government of the day introduced compulsory competitive tendering in 1989.

The need to tender resulted in the loss of the in-house service because at that stage it could not better an external contractor on cost.

Mr Leonard says: "As the scope of the original contracts included maintenance of the council's housing stock, no difficulties were encountered in obtaining sufficient interest from the private sector."

But in 1997 the large-scale voluntary transfer of housing stock to Rother Homes and the transfer of four housing maintenance contracts left Rother with just a maintenance contract for its own buildings.

When the building maintenance contract expired in March 2005 and Rother invited contractors to bid for the work only one viable tender was returned.

This was deemed by the council not to be competitive and the original contract was extended.

The new contract period began in April 2006 and was 30% dearer than its predecessor.

"This initial contract was for an 18 month period with a possible extension of six months. This extension period was approved in April 2007 and will end on March 31, 2008. It is not eligible for any further extension."

Mr Leonard says: "The history of events above describes the risk of externalising a small scale contract, (that excludes housing stock) requiring multiple building trades over a wide geographical area.

"The council's best efforts have not achieved a truly competitive bid or managed to contain costs as it would wish."

Negotiations with the contractors have seen contract costs increase by 37.5% over two years (30% plus 7.5%) excluding retail price index-linked costs."

Rother's revenue budget contains 320,800 to meet contractor costs for both responsive and programmed repairs.

Mr Leonard says it was hoped that the contractor would offer Rother access to a wide range of trades including carpentry, painting and decorating, brick-laying, plumbing and electrical.

"In reality there have been some concerns about the ability of the contractor to provide this range of trades to an acceptable quality, response time or at a competitive rate. To ensure that work is completed council officers have also needed to commission other contractors."

He says the current method of working with the contractor has not seen an improvement in response times or quality of work.

"This has been most noticeable during the later part of 2007."

He says the option now are:

*Seek fresh tenders - not seen as viable

*Assign the contract - also not considered viable

*Partnership with others - Initial investigations with neighbouring authorities have "failed to gain enthusiasm" with their contractors.

*To have no retained contractor for responsive work but seek quotes or commission contractors on a job by job basis. This would give no guarantee of a quick response, no cost certainty and a high level of administrative input in securing a contractor for each piece of work of work needed.

*In-house team