(KEY DECISION)

Report No.95/2019

Report No.98/2019 was received from the Strategic Director for Places. Mrs L Stephenson, Portfolio Holder for Culture and Leisure, Highways, Transportation & Road Safety introduced the report the purpose of which was to detail the outcome of the recent OJEU procurement of statutory home to school contracts and seek approval to award.

During discussion the following points were noted:

·         Not supporting the recommendations would put the Council at risk of not meeting its statutory obligations.

·         Mrs Stephenson, the Portfolio Holder for Transport, had received some questions on home to school transport from Councillor Waller and the responses to these have been appended to the minutes.

·         The Strategic Director for Places would provide further detail to Cabinet on whether the proposed Rutland contract was good value for money compared to other contracts that the Welland Procurement Unit had advised on.

·         The Strategic Director for Places confirmed that although the process was running three weeks behind, the contract would be in place and operational for the beginning of the new school term.

·         Some preliminary checks on licenses were carried out pre tender but most were done after the contract was awarded.

·         Officers would confirm how much the Council was saving against the budget set at the beginning of the year.

·         The community safety section of the report should have considered the implications of transporting children across the County and issues such as DBS checks.

·         Mr Brown asked whether the timing of the contract process could be bought forward as six weeks before the start of the academic year seemed to be too late to resolve any issues, had anything gone wrong. Mrs Stephenson responded that ideally the process would happen sooner but that it was dependent on information provided by schools and the schools admissions process could be very variable.

DECISIONS

Cabinet:

1.    AUTHORISED the award of the home to school transport contracts listed in the results table in Appendix A.

2.    DELEGATED authority to the Strategic Director for Places in Consultation with the Strategic Director of Finance and Deputy Director of Corporate Governance to enter into all necessary contracts for the award.

Reasons for the decisions:

It is recommended that Cabinet approve the award of home to school transport contracts listed in Appendix A so that home to school transport services can commence in August 2019.