Vehicle Maintenance (Hansard, 10 July 1996)

§ Mr. Arbuthnot

This is a matter for the Army Base Repair Organisation under its framework document. I have asked the chief executive to write to the hon. Member.

Letter from. J. R. Drew to Mr. Barry Sheerman, dated 10 July 1996:

I am replying to your Question to the Secretary of State for Defence about the percentage of repairs, maintenance and servicing of Army vehicles carried out by private sector contractors as this matter falls within my area of responsibility as Chief Executive of the Army Base Repair Organisation (ABRO).The total workload handled by ABRO for the repair, servicing and maintenance of Army vehicles amounts to more than 2 million man-hours per year (this does not include repairs carried out within the Field Army, nor the repair of major and minor vehicle assemblies such as engines and transmissions held in store). Some 35% of this work is currently carried out by commercial contractors under contracts managed by ABRO. It should be noted that the work carried out by commercial contractors amounts to some 65% of the work associated with the Army's commercial type vehicle fleets. The preponderance of work conducted in-house by the Agency is on specialist and armoured vehicles which are of strategic importance to the Army and where either facilities available within industry are limited or the army requires to maintain its own facilities to cope with operational surges or to protect strategic capability.Much of the work carried out in-house by ABRO on commercial type vehicles, is in support of units of the Field Army under the command of Land Command. This and the other equipment repair support activities carried out for Land Command are being exposed to competition with commercial sector in a market test competition. The results of the competition are due to be recommended to Ministers by the end of January 1997.184W