(a)

the Council’s Fleet and Garage service currently controls most of, and maintains efficiently, the Council’s fleet; with such a large Fleet having many users, controls and standards of procurement the service requires review;

(b)

the project aimed to address the service through three work-streams including an IT vehicle tracking system, commissioning of vehicles and the exploration of additional commercial opportunities;

(c)

the proposed solution includes the fleet management and maintenance function taking control of all fleet matters, allowing a holistic view and central support and challenge across the Council;

(d)

the category management approach to fleet services would realise some significant financial benefits including fewer vehicles, reduced vehicles downtime, improved fuel control and better value procurement;

(e)

the projected was targeted to deliver at least £300k per annum in savings in the first year and a further £500k in the second year; this would result in an annual revenue reduction of £800k per annum by 2016/17. To deliver this there was a need for a one off total investment of £118k;

(f)

by developing the fleet management and maintenance teams and making the service financially viable, the service would be better able to compete in the market place;

(g)

this business case linked to other transformation business cases such as the Waste Collection Reorganisation and Street Services.

(h)

the Council would purchase the market leader in Fleet Management IT systems, to track vehicles and monitor the usage of each vehicle within the fleet;

(i)

the initial outlay of £91k for software development would count as a capital cost through the transformation programme;

(j)

since April/ May 2014 the Council had encouraged staff to take advantage of the Council’s MOT service at Princerock as the facility was underutilised;

(k)

the Council was talking to licensing officers as to whether the MOT taxi licensing arrangements could be provided by the Council other than several different providers;

(l)

the Council was in talks with other authorities to discuss the feasibility of extending the offer of some workshop space for their use;

(m)

the Council’s fleet vehicles which were previously parked in the Civic Centre car park had been moved to the top floor of the Theatre Royal car park as their usage could be monitored by the automatic number plate recognition system and pay and display spaces in the Civic Centre could be freed up for paying customers;

(n)

the current IT fleet management system was outdated and needed replacing; the new system would contain profiling information linked to the vehicles as well as service requirements and the efficiency of vehicles;

(o)

there were several acronyms contained within the report; officers would aim to provide a glossary for future reports/ business cases;

(p)

the new IT fleet management system would be able to track vehicles’ location and efficiency;

(q)

a full time resource would be dedicated to servicing MOTs; MOTs would be costed at approximately £35;

(r)

the Council’s own workforce would install the vehicle trackers; this was considered to be cheaper than having them fitted by an external company and would allow members of staff to be a centre of excellence for tracker installation.