Procurement Complexities

Martin Francis has a rather wrongheaded criticism of the Council's vehicle procurement here.  He is objecting to the proposal to rent vehicles for the remainder of the Veolia contract, rather than leasing or buying the vehicles.  The problem with leasing/buying vehicles is what do you do with them at the end of the contract in 2014? 

Any rival to Veolia would be reluctant to bid for a contract where they had to take on new vehicles for a few years and replace them part way through (or keep them for the full length of a contract towards the end of which they would become more suspectible to breakdown).  Veolia itself would have a similar problem, of course.  Hence the officers reference to "the burden of ownership".  Their recommendation to hire vehicles, albeit at a somewhat higher annual cost in the short term, is designed to give us maximum competition when the contract comes up in 2014, and therefore a much bigger saving overall.