Peterborough City Council has announced its preferred bidder to deliver highways services including road maintenance, street lighting and gulley cleansing under a new 10-year contract which could save in the region of £750,000 a year.

Council Leader Marco Cereste has been asked to sign off the decision to appoint Atkins to provide highways services for the city council from 1 October 2013.

The announcement of Atkins as the preferred bidder follows a year-long tender process to find the contractor that could provide the quality services that the city needs for the best possible price. The new contract worth £7.6m annually will run for 10 years, with the ability to extend it for two further five-year periods.

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Councillor Cereste, Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Growth, Strategic Planning, Housing, Economic Development and Business Engagement, said: "This new contract has the potential to save the council and therefore its taxpayers in the region of £7.5 million in the next ten years, which at a time when we are receiving less money from Government, can be re-invested into providing other services for residents.

"Many of the services that this new contract will provide are essential, such as pot-hole repairs, traffic light maintenance and gulley cleansing. We have a duty to provide these services for our residents, however renegotiating the existing four contracts into one, thus reducing the cost of managing the contracts, means we can continue to provide high quality services for less money."

(CD/JP)