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Public sector lease framework deal starts in May
Date: 21 April 2011 | Author: Rachel Burgess
The Government's new vehicle lease framework agreement for fleet procurement across the public sector goes live on 13 May.
Announced in January, top players in BusinessCar's BC50 listing of the biggest leasing companies including Leaseplan, Lex Autolease, VW Group Leasing, Alphabet, TC Harrison, Inchcape, ING, Lookers, Lombard Vehicle Management and Arnold Clark are all permitted to work with local authorities and Government departments.
The UK's largest leasing provider, Lex Autolease, will suppy services alongside other firms across five areas or 'lots', such as providing contract hire arrangements for cars and commercial vehicles below 7.5 tonnes.
Andrew Franklin, head of public sector at Lex Autolease, said: "Many of the services covered under the individual lots are interlinked, so there are great time, cost and convenience benefits from being able to outsource to one supplier for all of those requirements. Coupled with that, we already operate a fleet of over 40,000 public sector vehicles, so we are well-versed in managing the scale and complexity of these contracts.
"At a time when many public sector organisations are looking to deal with the legacy of the Spending Review 2010, we are best placed to offer value-for-money solutions," Franklin added.
The outsourcing agreement was set up by Buying Solutions, the Government's procurement department, and is designed to help public sector organisations benefit from its collective buying power and maximise efficiency saving. It is expected to save the Government at least £200 million a year on its fleet costs.
Superseding the previous optional lease-only agreement, it now includes fleet management and is expected to offer greater savings than the former framework. This fleet managment element was launched on 14 February this year with five companies, Babcock Land, BT Fleet, Lex Autolease, Logical Vehicle Management and Ryder, selected as suppliers.
When the new agreement was originally announced last year, Buying Solutions, said the agreement would be compulsory for the main Government departments: "The use of this framework agreement for the supply of leased motor vehicles as well as additional services associated with the implementation and management of outsourced fleets to central Government departments, executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies will be mandatory."
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