Road Maintenance Partnership Agreement Extension
Perth and Kinross Council · 22 April 2026
Back to Economy and Infrastructure Committee — 22 April 2026 and its agenda
Text extracted from the council's PDF. Layout and reading order may differ from the original.
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Our vision is a Perth and Kinross where everyone can live life well, free from poverty and inequality ___________________________________________________________________ Committee or Board: Environment and Infrastructure Date of Meeting: 22 April 2026 Report Title: Road Maintenance Partnership Agreement Extension Report Number: 26/108 Report Author: Willie Mahoney, Depute Road Maintenance Partnership Manager Organisational Lead: Fraser Crofts, Strategic Lead - Environment & Infrastructure ___________________________________________________________________ 1. Purpose 1.1 The purpose of this report is to seek approval to implement the 2 year extension option to the existing partnership agreement. 1.2 And to advise on further collaborative arrangements during this extension period, aimed to optimise efficiency and informing the development of a successor agreement beyond 2028. 1.3 Sections 1. Purpose 2. Recommendations 3. Background/Main Issues 4. Proposal 5. Impact and Value Assessment 6. Appendices 2. Recommendations It is recommended that the Committee: 2.1 Extends the existing partnership agreement (included in Appendix 1) between Perth and Kinross Council and Tayside Contracts to 31 March 2028 to deliver road maintenance, winter maintenance and all year emergency response services.
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2.2 Delegates authority to the Strategic Lead Environment & Infrastructure to trial alternate methods of measurement and reimbursement during the 2 year extension period to inform the development of future arrangements beyond 2028: and 2.3 Agrees that the partnership continue to report performance annually as part of the Council’s Corporate performance management framework. 3. Background/Main Issues 3.1 The Road Maintenance Partnership, established in 2012 (Report 12/131 refers), is a collaboration between Perth & Kinross Council (PKC) and Tayside Contracts (TC). Since inception, the partnership has delivered integrated services, optimised efficiency, and provided best value and resilience through shared services and multi-disciplinary roles. 3.2 A review of the partnership arrangements, reported to the Enterprise & Infrastructure Committee on 15 May 2019 (Report 19/134 refers) concluded that the integrated partnership with TC remained the preferred operating model. 3.3 The Road Maintenance Partnership has further evolved under the current term of the partnership agreement combining roles and sharing duties to increase service resilience, including the provision of all year emergency response, and making most efficient use of the roles available to respond to out of hours events. 3.4 Collaborative work has continued between the partnership and PKC, reaching out to colleagues in all Council teams to expand on the services currently provided including Greenspace, Housing, Property, Structures and Traffic and Network with a view to optimising resources. 3.5 Staff from Traffic & Network and the Road Construction Consent team have recently relocated to Ruthvenfield Depot improving interaction and operational effectiveness between teams (RMP, Street Lighting, Traffic & Network and RCC are all now based at Ruthvenfield Depot). In addition, some members of the Traffic & Network team have been included in the out of hours standby rota further improving resilience and reducing pressure on out of hours service delivery. 3.6 Arrangements are in place to provide a coordinated response to emergencies with colleagues in Operations and Community Support & Enforcement to augment RMP resources. Assistance is also provided to volunteer Community Resilience Groups throughout Perth and Kinross. 3.7 Since April 2024 PKC has received 94 Yellow and 11 Amber severe weather warnings for rain, wind, snow and ice. 8 of these weather warnings related to named storm events. The RMP has responded to many of these warnings as “business as usual” but in some instances has incurred significant out of hours activity for flooding and windblown trees.
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3.8 Over the past 2 years the Perth Flood Alleviation System (PFAS) has been implemented on 13 occasions with the closure of floodgates. 3.9 The RMP also provide out of hours response to reported road defects, dangerous buildings, road traffic accidents, fires including recent cases at Scott Street and Balhousie School, wildfires such as Path of Condie, and support events as requested by Police Scotland, event organisers, community groups and other PKC Services. 3.10 Following lessons learned during the Perth flood event of October 2023, resources have increased for standby during holiday periods. There are 4 main operative leave periods being the public holidays over Christmas & New Year, 1 week in Easter, 2 weeks in summer and 1 week in October. To provide enhanced resilience during these periods, a minimum of 14 operatives are on standby. The main summer holiday periods at Perth and Blairgowrie Depots are staggered to allow a greater number of operatives to be available. 3.11 During the core winter period 56 operatives are on standby with additional support from colleagues in Operations and Community Support & Enforcement. 3.12 Since April 2024 £33.9M has been spent on road maintenance (including the winter service). This includes additional funding provided in 2025-26 which enabled an additional 7 road resurfacing projects to be carried out, installation of flood barriers on roads alongside the River Isla, ditch cleaning at various locations and sign visibility improvements on the rural A class road network. The RMP are currently completing an upgrade of Tummel Crescent, Pitlochry to allow this road to be formally adopted and included on the List of Public Roads. 3.13 In January 2026 mutual aid was provided to Aberdeenshire Council with the provision of a snow cutter. Aberdeenshire Council paid for the running cost of the vehicle and operatives for the period of use. 3.14 To help mitigate climate change and in keeping with the Council’s decarbonisation commitments, the purpose-built fleet of road gritters are now fuelled with hydro treated vegetable oil (HVO). Tayside Contract’s quarry at Collace have developed warm mix asphalts using the same quantities of aggregate but with a polymer modified bitumen which allows the material to be mixed at a lower temperature resulting in lower CO2 emissions. Our construction operations continue to recycle 95% of materials from our activities and we promote good waste separation practices on site and at our depots aimed at reducing the amount of general construction waste sent to landfill. 3.15 To enhance communication, since October 2025 a bi-monthly newsletter has been issued to all Elected Members in Perth and Kinross. This informs progress on budget spend, gully emptying and repairs to road safety defects and highlights some of the projects that have been completed with ‘before and after’ pictures to provide real examples of the improvements made. We also
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use this to provide information on some of the processes and procedures used in daily operations. Details of progress on gully emptying schedules are now made available publicly on the Councils web pages. 3.16 The table below sets out some high-level performance information for the Road Maintenance Partnership over the last 2 financial years: Cat 1 (repair within 4 hours – target 100%) Cat 2 (repair within 5 days – target 100%) Cat 3 (repair within 30 days – target 95%) 24/25- 18/18 (100%) 24/25 771/935 (82%) 24/25 8654/9717 (89%) Road defects repaired on time 25/26 19/19 (100%) 25/26 624/702 (89%) 25/26 17972/8203 (97%) Gullies cleaned 44,400 gullies in PKC 23170 cleaned in 24/25 (96% of target) 26900 cleaned to date 25/26 (86% of target Road Inspections 24/25 561/562 (99.8%) on time 25/26 568/568 (100%) on time Road Resurfacing 24/25 – 13 miles 25/26 12.6 miles 3.17 Road maintenance works are currently procured through a framework schedule of rates contract which is a comprehensive pricing document listing predefined unit costs for various construction tasks and elements. The current framework contract ends in September 2026 3.18 Works have also been procured from TC through other forms of method of measurement including dayworks rates and cost and reimbursement models. Currently these forms of payment are used where the scope of the work is of lesser certainty. The table below notes orders raised against the differing methods of payment in 2025/26. 2025/2026 Category Number of Orders Value £M’s %age of spend Total orders raised 469 £16.163 100% Schedule of Rates 253 £12.904 75% Dayworks 186 £3.856 20% Cost Reimbursement 30 £0.782 5% 3.19. The schedule of rates method places financial recovery risk on TC, requiring risk pricing in work rates. While this approach reduces the Council’s claims
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risk exposure, such protection is unnecessary when working with a Council owned arms length organisation. A cost reimbursement model shares risk, and bases valuation on actual costs. This method improves asset management evaluation and benchmarking by reflecting true costs and reduces administrative workload in estimating and quantity surveying allowing RMP staff to focus on delivery. 3.20 A cost reimbursement contract is a construction agreement that reimburses direct and indirect costs and adds a markup covering the contractor's overhead and rate of return. In Civil Engineering, cost reimbursement contracts are often used when the project scope is uncertain or likely to change over time. Cost reimbursement contracts allow for greater collaboration between clients and contractors, sharing risk and reward and fostering transparency and shared responsibility throughout the project’s lifecycle. 4. Proposal 4.1 It is proposed to extend the existing Road Maintenance Partnership agreement for the 2 year optional extension period as set out in report no 24/10 and included in Appendix 1 of this report. 4.2 Furthermore, it is proposed the partnership move from schedule of rates and demonstrable cost rated works to an open book actual cost reimbursable arrangement. All works including winter maintenance will be managed through the cost reimbursement arrangement, therefore sharing risk through all elements of the partnership. Based on a comparison against schedule of rates, with the same level of budget provision, it is considered that this approach to shared risk could result in more improvement works being carried out on the roads asset. TC operates under a similar agreement for road services in Dundee, covering the same shared services but with variations in outsourcing and measurement/valuation methods. The 2 year extension provides an opportunity to trial cost reimbursement within the Perth & Kinross RMP to assess whether similar benefits can be achieved. 4.3 Regarding outsourcing of work, the partnership must maintain sufficient resources to deliver all-year round severe weather and emergency response resilience services and planned works programmes. Efficiency depends on fully utilising these resources through an optimised works schedule. It is proposed to maximise the use of the in-house capacity available and use outsourced resources only for workload peaks and specialist activities not provided by the partnership. 4.4 Changing the measurement and valuation method will not affect the partnership’s productivity or profitability as any savings will be invested in the road network. The benefits are primarily practical with reduced administration allowing more time to focus on delivery and emergency response.
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4.5 The proposed trial does not constitute a departure from the current agreement but will inform the development of future arrangements beyond 2028. The RMP Executive Board, comprising senior officers from PKC and TC, will monitor and benchmark performance on a quarterly basis during the trial period and make adjustments as required to maintain performance and service delivery. 4.6 The RMP will continue to report performance annually as part of the Council’s Corporate performance management framework. 5. Impact and Value Assessment 5.1 Extension to RMP agreement IVA 6. Appendices 6.1 Appendix 1 - RMP Partnering Agreement April 2026-March 2028