Issue - meetings

Background:

This report had been circulated separately to the main agenda within Supplementary Agenda No.1. The Cabinet accepted the report as urgent to enable consideration of the matter at the earliest opportunity given that the next scheduled Cabinet meeting was not due to take place until 7 April 2026. As the Grounds Maintenance Service needed to be brought back in-house and be operational from 1 April 2026, further delay in considering the report would risk there being no service provision from that date.

The report requested that the Cabinet agree to rescind a previous decision made by the Cabinet to award the contract for Grounds Maintenance to Canvins Group and instead return provision of the service to in house delivery.

The report set out that following the original decision to award the contract to Canvins Group, it had been assessed by the Facilities Contracts Manager that service delivery should return to Medway Council FM Service Delivery team, following similar Cabinet decisions in relation to Greenspaces service delivery. This would enable better value for money and greater control of service provision.

Reasons:

Transferring the grounds maintenance function to the Council will provide greater oversight of the grounds maintenance work, improving accountability and responsibility of the service delivery over that of 3^rd party services, greater responsiveness and improved financial control and monitoring.

As part of bringing the grounds maintenance contract in house, it will also provide greater flexibility of cross service working between FM Service Delivery and Greenspaces contract provision.