Would any Hulleys staff be entitled to TUPE to the new operator, or does Hulleys have the right to refuse? If the former, then Hulleys would presumably be short of staff to run their commercial services.
No, as they are not employed specifically to operate those tenders, they are employed and duties spread across both their tendered and commercial provision
I remember my days on contract management in another sector. Every so often, you knew you had to terminate a contract for poor performance. You valued the supplier, you worked with them to improve, but sometimes, although it was your worst outcome, you had to terminate. If a company thinks you won't terminate or impose penalties, why would they change.
Indeed, and this withdrawal of the contracts will have been the last step by DCC, not the first. All these contracts have a performance/dispute resolution section written in which sets out how poor performance will be managed. There will have been several exchanges/meetings between DCC and the operator, an improvement plan will have been jointly developed and agreed on, and them monitored. Only as the last resort when all the above has failed will the Authority (DCC) terminate the contracts as doing so - as others have rightly pointed out - costs the Authority more in the long run, but poor performance and lack of any signs of improvement can't be allowed to contine.
That would have been the responsible thing to do. And DCC could have also removed one or two of the tenders, not everything.
The fact it appears to be everything I would say shows the sense of feeling at DCC and the operator just isn't improving anything no matter how many times they say they will, they have been saying it for years. Therfore, I find it highly unlikely that Hulleys will be asked to retain any of the current services on the basis that they can "provide a robust plan" as was distributed by the management a few days ago. Coincidentally, this was only issued some time after DCC had gone public despite the management apparently knowing what DCC were going to do from a meeting sometime beforehand. Why would you not provide reassurance to your staff before such an announcement or was it rather a quick, $#!T what can we say that makes it not sound as bad? Much the same as the propaganda of DCC supporting them at the inquiry with a letter. Regardless of any of that, I just can't see DCC knowing how huge and prolonged this problem has been, openly acknowledging it and saying they will source replacement operators, only to go back on it. It makes them just as ba
Agreed, as above this will not have been an overnight decision by DCC but part of a process that has been going on over several months per the performance management element of the contract between DCC and the Operator.
Monitoring will have been done, meetings held, improvement plans agreed etc etc. Clearly the Operator has not been able to meet the conditions of the improvement plan and thus the final option open to DCC is contract termination.
I believe Hulleys submitted a 'package bid for these services - so rather than bidding for each service individually they put forward one bid with one price to cover all these services - perfectly allowable and normal. As such, there's only 1 contract not individual ones for each service, so DCC couldn't have terminated say the 63 and 110 contract and left them with the others. If you bid as a package, then you stand to loose the package.
