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Following the
recent decision by the NHS to continue using the services of
a London private hire company who had been exposed in the national
press as charging them for non-existent trips, another taxi story
involving the NHS has now come to us. This one involves Glasgow
Radio Taxis, a driver’s cooperative run on similar lines to
Dial-a-Cab. The Glasgow company have a fleet approaching 1000
and only use purpose built taxis. Their involvement with an NHS
tender is nothing short of astonishing and having read their
account, Call Sign decided that it should be published. It
has been written by their Secretary, Robert Dunabie... "For the past 50 years and more, the licensed taxi industry in Glasgow has provided taxi service requirements to the various health boards in Glasgow and surrounding districts. During this period, such was the mutual trust between the parties, that contracts as such were rare. However during 2007, Greater Glasgow & Clyde NHS Trust, to comply with European law, invited interested parties to submit tenders for the supply of taxi services for the various hospitals under their control. The contract to transport urgent specimens, ambulant patients, emergency standby doctors surgeons and nurses etc, was valued at approximately £2 million and accounted for around 15,000 hires monthly. Glasgow Taxis Ltd duly submitted a tender as required and were in fact advised shortly thereafter that their tender for the 2year contract had been successful. This decision was quickly rescinded following a legal challenge from a private hire (minicab) company that alleged the procurement dept had not properly followed the due tendering process. We were asked to continue providing support until the contract could be re-tendered. We agreed to this request. During the summer of 2008, the Health Board conducted a second round of tendering with the closing |
Taxis and the National Heath Service |
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 date being September. As the wording of the contract seemed heavily weighted in favour of the Hackney vehicle, ie seating for five or six persons with sufficient floor space to allow passenger’s free movement, a partition between the driver and passengers and wheelchair accessibility etc and since our main competitor could not comply with these requirements, we were quietly confident that we would again be successful. However, somewhere along the line the goalposts were moved and price became the deciding factor with all other considerations, including the alleged background of the rival tenderer and the fact their vehicles did not meet the required specifications, being pushed to one side. We were advised that the contract was to be awarded to Network private hire and that they would be given time to comply with the required elements of the contract, such as a percentage of vehicles must be fully accessible. We were expected to continue providing taxi services until they could come up to speed. The contract is allegedly weighted as follows: Cost 40% ... Service & Delivery 40% ... Quality 15% ... Equality and Diversity 5%. Since we were ahead on 60% of the whole, the decision to award to Network was to say the least, baffling. We then began the process of challenging this decision, including asking for assistance from the Scottish Taxi Federation, of which we are founder members. They in turn referred the case to the Scottish Government and since the NHS is a publicly funded body, they were asked for |
assistance. To be fair, they
tried all that could be done from a political perspective and in
addition, Strathclyde police issued a warning to the Health
Board that they should be wary of dealing with a group that were
alleged to have "links to organised crime." In all, the challenge lasted for eleven months, but in the end the NHS board refused to bend to political pressure and advice from the police and so on 15th December 2009, the decision to award the contract to Network private hire group was ratified. We were advised that they would cover around 8000 hires per month and we were asked to provide services for the remaining hires until such time as the Board could arrange a second round of tendering. It was decided to call a meeting of our members to inform them of the outcome of discussions and the offer on the table. Following a debate, our members made it clear that they were not prepared to be used as a prop in this way. We were instructed to give 28 days notice of our intention to withdraw our services. As it can perhaps be imagined, feelings within our trade are running high at this time, since it appears that operating a legitimate business whose sole source of income is derived from members subscriptions appears to count for nothing with the procurement types in the NHS. It is indeed a sad day and one in the eye for decency. As it is obvious that Glasgow Taxis Ltd are unable to compete on price, it may be that the only way to combat private hire is to form our own private hire company and provide competition for drivers at a price level they will find hard to match. This will be put to our membership at our forthcoming A.G.M." Robert Dunabie |
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