Kent Announce Shortlist for the Kent Highway Services' core maintenance contract

5.48.37pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 13th Jul 2010

Kent County Council have announced that they have finished the short-listing process of the companies who expressed an interest in the core highways maintenance contract. The core maintenance contract is currently provided in partnership with Ringway, and was put out to tender a few months ago.

The companies who have been selected to go forward to the next stage are:

• Atkins

• Balfour Beatty

• Carillion

• Colas

• Enterprise

• May Gurney

The next stage of the process is for Kent Highway Services to begin an open dialogue with the short-listed contractors. The director of Kent Highway Services, John Burr, said:

"Existing partner Ringway have not been short-listed for the next stages of procurement. Discussions will be held with them to ensure that we continue to work together to provide the best highway service to the residents of Kent.

"We have achieved much together over the last few years and Kent will continue to work closely with Ringway staff to ensure a smooth transition to the new contract."

Folkestone West Liberal Democrat County Councillor, Tim Prater, commented:

"It is right that this contract was put out to tender - the Liberal Democrats have been arguing that this should be done for ages. It's good to see progress on short-listing new contractors, and the next step of the process should be about agreeing a deal which gets the best possible value for money for Kent.

"We need to see more and better maintenance on our local roads, at the lowest possible cost to Kent taxpayers. Working smarter, with a well negotiated contract, Kent should be able to achieve this. There has to be flexibility built in to the new contract to allow local contractors to be used for specific local projects: by cutting the red tape and making it easier to bid for road maintenance work, Kent could see costs of repairs cut radically by using local small businesses, with that money then being spent locally.

"Some of the recent pothole repairs have been tackled by contractors bidding on a 'by district' basis - really rethinking the system could make it much easier for many more smaller companies to bid for work by town or even by job."