Asset Delivery (AD) Area 14 Maintenance & Response (M&R) Contract

This VEAT Notice relates to a Deed of Variation to a National Highways' Maintenance and Response Contract. This Contract currently provides and undertakes all cyclical and reactive maintenance, incident response, defect rectification and severe weather delivery on the trunk roads and motorways within Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, County Durham, North Yorkshire (National Highways Area 14) (the "Contract").

Duties also include maintenance of roadside technology, the provision of traffic management for the contractor, maintenance and incident response activities, and traffic management for others who may be working on the network. The variation will add the eastern section of the A69 from the Cumbria/Northumberland County boundary and the A19 Dishforth to Tyne Tunnel into the Contract which is currently maintained under a Design Build Finance & Operate ("DBFO") contract which are due to expire on 31 March 2026 and 23 February 2027.

Consequently the total value of the Contract will increase by approximately 26%. It will also shorten the Contract which will have a new end date of 1 June 2028 instead of 31 March 2032 in order to align with the procurement process for the next Maintenance & Response contracts.

A Design Build Finance Operate (DBFO) contract covers Section of A69 from Northumberland county boundary. National Highways therefore must appoint an alternative maintenance contractor and it considers that the scope of these works is already included within this existing Maintenance and Response Contract which is adjacent geographically.

Therefore these roads will be incorporated into the existing Maintenance and Response (M&R) Contract for Area 14 of the Strategic Road Network following the award of the Deed of Variation. This together with the need for national alignment of the expiry dates for all of the M&R contracts, ready for their re-procurement, means that the term of the Area 14 Contract will be shortened and will have a new end date of 1st June 2028 instead of 31st March 2032. The new overall estimated Contract value will become £ 165,630,000.