CAPITA STILL MISSING 1 IN 5 KEY C-CHARGE PERFORMANCE TARGETS

12.01.00am GMT Tue 25th Jan 2005

London Assembly Liberal Democrats today revealed new figures that show the company running the Congestion Charge, Capita, have failed to achieve more than one in five of the targets set for them by Mayor Livingstone.

The figures, taken from Transport for London Board papers, show that out of 39 Key Performance Targets, 21% of these had not been met. Failure to meet these targets is costing Capita around £100,000 per month in fines.

The figures come less than a fortnight after it was revealed that the Mayor is expected to award Capita with a 12 month extension on their current contract to run the C-charge zone and handed the job of running the western extension into Kensington and Chelsea.

Liberal Democrat London Assembly Transport Spokesperson, Lynne Featherstone, said:-

"When there are still so many key targets being missed by Capita, serious questions must be asked of the Mayor as to why he intends to give the go-ahead to Capita for both an extension on their existing contract and the new contract for the westward extension.

"While Capita has improved its service, it is still failing to meet its obligations in many areas. If a company is not hitting the performance targets set for it, then either they should have to wait until their performance improves to be awarded an extension to their contract or it should be awarded to someone else.

"It appears that Capita have boxed the Mayor between a rock and a hard place. If he opens the extension zone up for open bidding there will be huge complications in the scheme, but if he keeps with the current contract, he will be left with a service that is still failing to deliver on key performance targets.

"The Mayor should adapt a more haste, less speed approach to awarding new contracts to Capita until they meet their current agreements. Unless this happens, it will be Londoners that are forced to suffer the consequences."

ENDS

Notes to editor

The information has been taken from Transport for London Board Papers discussed on the 20th January 2005 Item 8, page 2

"The contract with Capita contains 39 key performance indicators (KPIs) focussed mainly on availability and timeliness of key services and 13 additional indicators (QPIs) focussed on the quality of service across the board. In October 2003 some 35% of the performance indicators (KPIs plus QPIs) were not fully met, some to a very significant degree with consequential cost to Capita of some £580,000/month. By October 2004 the overall picture was much improved with 21% of the performance indicators not being met with the cost to Capita reduced to some £100,000/month."

According to TfL, the reasons for extending the contract with Capita and giving them the Westward Extension Zone contract can be found below and is taken from pages 7&8 of Item 8 of the Transport for London Board papers discussed on the 20th January 2005:-

"5.4 Key factors supporting this rationale are:

· Current service provision for core services (Capita), on-street enforcement (NCP), Merchant Acquirer (Barclays) are satisfactory and the proposed customer improvements will further reduce the level of "hassle".

· Cost of early termination of the Capita contract at TfL's convenience to procure a common service across the combined central and western zones in February 2007, through a new competition, is high (£16.4M) and may adversely affect continuity and level of service.

· The core services currently provided by Capita are scaleable for WEZ and lend themselves to securing a transparent cost plus pricing mechanism, largely determined in accordance with the existing change control mechanism and which offers a best value solution to TfL, predictability of service and advantages in terms of emerging new enforcement infrastructure technology in 2007.

· Full competition for WEZ alone with a go live in Feb 2007 would require considerable additional investment by alternative suppliers for a relatively short contract term (approximately one or two years) estimated at around £55m for the extended core services (excluding the enforcement infrastructure) which is unlikely to offer value for money.

· Full competition for WEZ alone would also; add cost to TfL, result in an impractical designation of responsibilities between service providers over common services between the central zone and proposed extension, add risk to maintaining quality of service on the central scheme and be premature in terms of Tag and Beacon technology, which would allow further improvements to the operation of the scheme.

· The existing Capita and other key contracts allow for a one year extension to their five year term to February 2009 which would allow for extended use of existing assets and tie into the potential offered by Tag and Beacon technology in 2009.

· With a re-let in Feb 2009 for the combined zone, WEZ services will operate for two years at a more reasonable cost to TfL than if the Capita contract was not extended beyond February 2008.

5.5 The following arguments are also relevant to supporting this strategy from a legal perspective.

· Boundary changes are within the contemplation of the original contract and may be invoked through the Mandatory Change Procedure as a permitted variation.

· Capita already provide some retail services to residents in WEZ under the terms of the existing contract.

· The provision of core services and image management to WEZ will be the same as for the CLoCCS service, only a larger scale.

· For technical reasons and reasons connected with the protection of exclusive rights Capita would be the only contractor able effectively to provide those core services which are to be extended for a limited term. As far as practicable, all other services will be competitively let and/or called-off from existing frameworks.

· Procurement of all congestion charging services for the re-let of the proposed combined zone is planned to start in early 2006 with a proposed commencement date of February 2009."