Cheshire East Council has unveiled its new approach to servicing the area's highways which includes an improved fleet of gritting vehicles, roadwork updates via Twitter and savings of more than £1 million a year.
Ringway Jacobs will take over the running of the highways service on Thursday, October 6th, which will see Cheshire East staff integrated with staff from the former provider BAM Nuttall Ltd.
Cheshire East Council will oversee the running of the service which is expected to fulfil a number of priorities including pothole repairs, highways management, gritting, street lights and general highway maintenance.
In acquiring the contract, Ringway Jacobs had to demonstrate how they could provide an efficient, improved service at a local level, whilst making financial savings. As part of the new way of working, a greater proportion of the highways service budget will be concentrated on repairing roads.
In addition to this, the public will soon be able to access a new 'Service Information Centre' on the Cheshire East Council website where you will be able to access a range of services, including tracking gritting vehicles and the social-networking site, Twitter, will also be used to update drivers on disruption to routes because of weather, roadworks and general highways information.
Cheshire East Councillor Rod Menlove, Cabinet member with responsibility for environmental services, said: "This is an exciting time for Cheshire East Council's highways service. We have a brand new partnership with a forward-thinking provider who is going to improve the service and make much-needed savings.
"The new partnership was brought about via an extensive procurement period, undertaken openly and swiftly. Our focus is on providing an efficient service which meets the demands of our residents – I am pleased to say Ringway Jacobs shares this vision."
Bill Taylor, Managing Director for Ringway Jacobs, said: "We have spent four months preparing to hit the ground running on day one, including building a new modern depot and offices in Congleton.
"It is our intention to work openly in partnership with the council to deliver quality services to residents and deliver value for money to the council."
Cheshire East's partnership with Ringway Jacobs is for five years, with the option of extending this to seven.
Photo: (L-R) Councillor Rod Menlove, Cabinet member with responsibility for environmental services; John Nicholson, Cheshire East Council's strategic director for places and organisation capacity; David Lee, Chairman of Ringway Jacobs; Erika Wenzel, Chief Executive of Cheshire East Council; Councillor Wesley Fitzgerald, Cheshire East Council Leader; and Kevin Melling, Cheshire East Council's highways manager.
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Specifically CEC HIghways seemed to have communication and management problems with its previous contractors. With the bypass contractor Birse, relatively simple signage corrections took 6 months to undertake from notification (only after finally being escalated through councilors). Other issues seemed to be the repeated ineffectual filling of potholes (again worked through a contractor), noisy contractors working unsociable hours and generally a lack of customer feedback - you might report a problem but whether or not it was a problem the council and its contractors recognised, when and if they would fix it was effectively a well kept secret. I am only talking about my own experience with the council, I am sure others have their own stories.
Still, that is in the past and we must look forward and I am reassured in the article by the emphasis on openness. It is important that we give the council effective feedback on how to give a better and more cost effective service because with so many cut-backs it would be abhorrent to see any unnecessary further waste in the region.