During this very tough time for our industry, we are pleased to announce some positive news, following work the LPHCA has been undertaking with our members in Buckinghamshire.
Towards the end of last year, we were contacted by members in Buckinghamshire to alert us to the fact they were being presented with new contracts from the council with unreasonable terms and conditions, including penalty fines that were so punitive that in edition 88 of Private Hire News we produced an article called You won't believe this!
Following several meetings with members and failed attempts to get meaningful dialogue with Buckinghamshire County Council (BCC) the LPHCA team organised a peaceful protest, on Thursday 5th December 2019, at the BCC offices with members, operators and drivers to hand in a petition against the inappropriate new terms and conditions for the council contracts.
Since our protest, we were pleased to have been engaged with by the council and we provided an update in edition 89 of Private Hire News that we called Positive Progress, which mentioned that the "Director of Transport Services for Buckinghamshire County Council had invited suppliers to attend one of several workshops in February."
Since then, we are now delighted to report that all new contracts procured on the Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) from May 2020 onwards are proposed to be under revised terms and conditions, which is fantastic news, not only for our members, but also for the wider industry and all of the PHV and taxi drivers in Buckiinghamshire. The key changes proposed to the new contracts are:
- Fines: removal of all ‘penalty’ fines
- Automatic Price Cap: removal of the 4% price cap on contract variations.
- Automatic Price Freeze: removal of an automatic price freeze on contracts
- Route Risk Assessments: supporting a Route Risk Assessments process not assessing the individual needs of the child.
The above was possible because LPHCA member operators worked closely with the LPHCA to enable us to organise a dignified protest, a petition, regular meetings, engagement with BCC, including a first class media campaign that was supported by local media (newspapers and radio), as well as major coverage in Private Hire News. All the communications legal advice was provided in conjunction with Neil Morley of Travis Morley (our legal advisors) who also attended meetings with members.
We are especially grateful to Sara Turnbull, Service Director for Transport Services at BCC and her team, LPHCA and BCA members Ken Hansen and Niknam Hussain for their help, support and respective assistance to achieve the outcomes the LPHCA have now secured. The letter from BCC to Operators can be seen in full below.
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Dear Operators,
At the workshops held in February 2020 concerns were raised about the Council’s changes to contact terms and conditions which were introduced in 2019 via the Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS). The feedback at the workshops, as per the petition received, included a request to remove penalty fine clauses.
We have listened to this feedback and propose to change our terms and conditions in response.We are in a time of great uncertainty and we want to work with you in partnership on this issue and more widely to support you with the challenges of the impact of COVID-19.
All new contracts procured on the DPS from May 2020 onwards are proposed to be under revised terms and conditions. The key changes proposed are:
- Fines: Removal of all ‘penalty’ fines and replacing with performance breaches/defaults. The individual performance breaches/defaults would have a number of breach/default points associated to initiate improvement actions but could ultimately trigger suspension/termination (N.B. a simplified version of the performance framework contained in the previous terms and conditions).
- Automatic Price Cap: Removal of the 4% price cap on contract variations. All variations in service and price will be managed via the contract variation procedure.
- Automatic Price Freeze: Removal of an automatic price freeze on contracts and replace with the opportunity for suppliers to request changes linked to inflation or other reasonable pressures.
- Route Risk Assessments: Clarification in the contract terms and conditions that the expected role for suppliers is in regard to supporting a Route Risk Assessments process not assessing the individual needs of the child. This will be supported by additional guidance and training to be provided by the Council’s Transport Services Team.
Further issues raised in the workshops were in regard to the enforcement of driver behaviour and monitoring, as well as the length of time taken for DBS/ID Badges. We will be working with suppliers to improve the record keeping on monitoring of driver standards, and reviewing our ID Badge procedures to improve the process time.
Thank you for the feedback provided and if you have any further queries on this issue please contact us via the DPS portal. We will aim to publish the full revised terms and conditions on the DPS Portal by 30 April 2020, prior to introducing in all new contracts.
Thank you again for your feedback and patience on this issue.
Yours sincerely
Sara Turnbull Service Director Transport
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This 'good news' story shows what can be achieved by well-organised campaigns when everyone works together. We are delighted to have helped our members and their drivers in Buckinghamshire, and we are grateful for the helpful position adopted by the council and for the dialogue they undertook with us.
The LPHCA has a track record of the above, all around the country and we are happy to lend our expertise to situations where operators and councils are not working to everyone's benefit. If you are an operator that has any similar issues why not join the LPHCA today?