Status:
For Publication
Date:
Thursday, 18 December 2014
Report of: Director - Economy & Environment
Author:
Jonathan Hartley
Author Email:
[email protected]
Tel:
0161 7701681
Subject:
Street Lighting PFI Quarterly Update
Report to: Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Cabinet Member: Councillor Jacqueline Beswick
Comments from Statutory
Officers:
Monitoring Officer: Yes/No
Section 151 Officer: Yes/No
Key Decision: No
1
Purpose of the report
1.1 The purpose of this report is to provide a quarterly update to the committee on the
Street Lighting PFI.
2
Recommendations
2.1 It is recommended that the committee notes the information provided in this report.
3
Background
3.1 A report was issued to the Committee in July 2014 to provide an update on the
engineering difficulties experienced whilst replacing the street lighting on Stakehill
Lane and to provide the Committee with an update on the performance of the
Street Lighting PFI.
3.2 The Committee decided that the Director of Economy and Environment be
requested to submit reports to the Committee, on a quarterly basis, updating
Members on the performance and monitoring of the street lighting PFI project.
3.3 The Committee stated that the areas of interest are; progress of the street lighting
replacement programme, consultation, customer complaints / requests for service,
standard of work and local employment.
4
Street Lighting Replacement Programme
4.1 The street lighting Core Investment Programme (CIP) started in September 2011
and is forecast to be undertaken within the first five years of the PFI.
4.2 As of October this year, 17,575 existing street lights and illuminated signs have
been removed and 17,764 new units have been installed and certified as
compliant. This equates to approximately 70% completion of the replacement
programme.
4.3 At the end of the replacement programme a total of 24,945 existing units of
apparatus will have been removed and replaced with new energy efficient
equipment.
4.4 There are ten milestones in relation to the core investment programme set at six
monthly intervals. The service provider is currently approaching milestone seven,
at which point 18,298 units of apparatus will have been removed.
4.5 To date Eon has failed to meet each of the milestones, but in an attempt to
improve the situation, Eon has put a remedial plan in place and increased their
resource to accelerate their programme. Eon consider that these measures will
ensure that they meet future milestones and anticipate that they will complete the
programme ahead of schedule.
5
Consultation
5.1 The Service Provider is contractually obliged to undertake consultation with
stakeholders.
5.2 The current approach adopted by Eon is to meet with Ward Councillors and
Township Managers to discuss their proposals, publish the design drawings on
their website and then finally post information leaflets to affected residents prior to
marking out the columns positions on site.
5.3 There are further streams of consultation that Eon are required to undertake which
includes discussing their proposals with; Council departments, the conservation
officer, town centre committees, emergency services, utilities, planning authorities,
community and resident groups
5.4 It is acknowledged that there have been occasions when Eon have proceeded with
their works in advance of the above mentioned consultation stages. This has
resulted in meetings being arranged at short notice in an attempt to recover the
situation which has proved disruptive for all involved.
5.5 Consultation meetings for the following wards are in the process of being arranged;
Wardle and West Littleborough, North South & West Middleton, Smallbridge &
Firgrove and Milkstone & Deeplish.
5.6 The Contract requires the Service Provider to provide a programme of works for
the CIP; however they have rarely complied with this requirement of the contract
and as a consequence the Council issued a letter informing Community Lighting
Partnership that they have breached an obligation of the contract.
5.7 Eon have now provided two programmes; the first is a 12 month forward
programme which provides details at ward level over the next 12 months and the
second is a 3 month forward programme which provides details on a street by
street basis for the first 3 months. These programmes should be refreshed and reissued every three months.
5.8 A copy of both programmes was issued to all Councillors by email on 12th
November 2014 to provide forward notice of Eon’s replacement works.
5.9 It should be noted that the programmes are based on the best information
available at the time; however due to unforeseen issues relating to the design,
technical problems, permissions or supply of materials the programmes may be
subject to change without notice.
6
Customer Complaints / Service Requests
6.1 The formal process requires that all service requests and complaints are initially
directed to Eon for action and resolution through the agreed process set out in the
contract. If the resident or service user is unhappy with the outcome of their
enquiry, they have the option to make a formal complaint or appeal against the
decision. If the complaint is not resolved at stage one it is escalated to stage two
and reviewed by the management team within Eon. Stage three of the process
requires the complaint to be escalated to the Authority for investigation in line with
the Council’s corporate process.
6.2 At the O&S committee in July earlier this year, Members expressed their concern
regarding Eon’s handling of service requests and complaints. The two areas of
concern related to resident’s requests not being fulfilled and /or the length of time
that Eon took to respond to the request / complaint.
6.3 In an attempt to improve response times, Eon have advised the Council that they
are to recruit an additional member of staff to deal with customer requests and
complaints.
6.4 To reduce the risk of requests / complaints going unanswered, the Client Team are
now meeting with Eon staff once a week to review the current and outstanding
service requests and complaints. This has proved to be a valuable exercise;
however it is limited to the ones that the Council are aware of.
6.5 Eon have advised that the time taken from receipt to closing a complaint or service
request is currently 9.95 days on average. This indicates a 10% improvement over
the previous quarter which was on average 11 days.
6.6 Since the start of the PFI (4th July 2011) to 25th November 2014, Eon has
recorded a total of 3,336 service requests, enquires and complaints on their
resident liaison register. Of the 3,336 entries, 2,898 have been recorded as closed.
The remaining 438 (13%) are considered to be still live and discussions are
ongoing with regards to their resolution.
6.7 Since the start of the PFI (4th July 2011) to 25th November 2014, Eon has
recorded a total of 150 compliments in relation to the street lighting service.
7
Street Light Repairs
7.1 There are approximately 33,673 lighting points which includes street lights,
illuminated traffic signs and illuminated bollards. For the last twelve months the
number of lights in operation during the hours of darkness has remained above
98%.
7.2 The timescale for repairing a street light has been on average three days;
however this excludes lights that are subject to an underground supply fault.
8
Standard of Work
8.1 The PFI is a self monitoring contract and as such it is Eon’s responsibility to
supervise their own staff, subcontractors and standards of work.
8.2 In addition to Eon’s own monitoring, the PFI also employs the services of an
Independent Certifier (IC) to undertake a sample check of new apparatus that are
installed during the CIP. If the IC deems that the apparatus is not installed in
accordance with the specification and/or is not complete, the IC will withhold
certification and the Service Provider will not receive payment until such time that it
is compliant.
8.3 Any minor defects that are identified by the IC are passed to Eon for repair. Failure
to address the defect within the prescribed time may result in a financial penalty
being levied on the Service Provider.
8.4 Any issues with the standard of work which are identified by residents, Elected
Members, Council departments and the Client Monitoring Team are also referred
to Eon for repair within the prescribed period for rectification.
8.5 Following completion of the lighting replacement works, each resident receives a
customer satisfaction questionnaire (CSQ) together with a self addressed envelope
to return the form to the Council. The Council’s Client Monitoring Team records the
results from the CSQs together with any written comments. If an action is
requested within the comments, this is then forwarded to Eon for their attention.
8.6 The results from the CSQs for the periods July, August and September are
contained in appendix one, two and three. The results from October and November
are not yet included as they are still being returned by residents but they will be
included in the next quarterly update.
8.7 It can be seen from the CSQ results that residents considered that during this
quarter; the completed works and care whilst carrying out the work was on average
good to excellent, the effectiveness of the new lights and how they compared to
the old ones was on average good to excellent but by only a small margin, the
majority considered that the new lights will not reduce crime but did consider that it
will improve safety on the road, but both results were only by a small margin, they
considered that the information leaflets were good to excellent but again by only a
small margin and Eon’s handling of questions was on average split between
poor/adequate and good/excellent with a large proportion choosing not to answer.
9
Local Employment
9.1 Currently there are forty six Eon staff members that are employed on the contract
including three apprentices (it was four but one left recently).
9.2 Thirty two of the above have Oldham or Rochdale postcodes, the remaining staff
with the exception of three all have Greater Manchester postcodes.
9.3 The contract is supported by a number of sub-contractors, whom currently employ
between one hundred and one hundred and fifty people, although this varies
throughout the year.
9.4 Fifty percent of the sub-contractors have an Oldham or Rochdale postcode, forty
percent have a Greater Manchester postcode and the remaining ten percent live
outside of the Greater Manchester area.
10
Financial Implications
10.1
11
Legal Implications
11.1
12
There are no financial implications to this report.
There are no legal implications to this report.
Personnel Implications
12.1There are no personnel implications to this report.
13
Corporate Priorities
13.1 None
14
Risk Assessment Implications
14.11There are no risk assessment implications to this report
15
Equalities Impacts
15.1 Workforce Equality Impacts Assessment
There are no (significant) equality/community issues arising from this report.
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