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Off to Turkey...big yellow bus contract(Yorkshire Evening Post Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)No delight for Leeds firm facing redundancies who bid for the work EXCLUSIVE by peter Lazenby A FLEET of yellow buses to serve schools in Leeds will be built in Turkey - despite a bid for the work from a Leeds manufacturer which is facing redundancies. The contract for the buses, believed to be worth at least GBP7m and involving 140 to 150 buses, was placed by Leeds Metro, the administrative arm of West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Authority for Leeds. They will be built in Turkey, although 40 per cent of the parts will be made in Britain. Optare, the coach and bus builder which employs 400 workers at its factory at Cross Gates in Leeds, bid for the manufacturing contract but was unsuccessful. As revealed in the Yorkshire Evening Post this week, the company is currently negotiating a round of redundancies with the Transport and General Workers' Union. Distinctive yellow school buses, similar to those used in the United States, were put on trial in West Yorkshire two years ago. They were deemed a success, and are now being introduced across the county. The buses will be owned by the public transport authority, but will be leased to private operators responsible for running and maintaining them. Operators bidding for the contracts to provide services include First Group, and Haringey Community Transport, a not-for-profit operator based in London. But first the buses have to be built and supplied. Steve Clark, full-time officer of the Transport and General Workers' Union, said: "Because Optare are a local manufacturer they were led to believe that if they put in a reasonable bid they could secure the contract and it did look very much as though they were going to get the contract to build the buses. "But at the last minute it went to Turkey because they can be built there a lot cheaper." He said he believed 140 to 150 vehicles were involved, and said each bus would cost anything from GBP50,000 to GBP75,000 - a total of from GBP7m to GBP11.25m Mr Clark said he could not say whether loss of the contract was the cause of redundancies at Optare. Optare has not commented on the issue. Leeds Metro said its hands were tied by European tendering legislation and its duty to provide best value for local taxpayers. It confirmed the buses would be assembled in Turkey by a manufacturer contracted by a British-based firm, BMC (UK). It said it was buying other buses from Optare for other purposes. A spokesman said: "When Metro examined the tenders it received to provide vehicles for its My bus yellow school bus scheme, the bid that best met the criteria of the contract, provided best value-for-money and at 15 years, the longest warranty was from manufacturer BMC (UK). "So once again in its drive to achieve value-for-money for West Yorkshire's council tax payers and to comply with legislation, Metro awarded the contract to BMC." [email protected] |