Public Sector

Managed vehicle hire for local authority fleets

Councils do not have a vehicle supply problem. They have an accountability problem: a hire booked against one framework, maintained by a third party, invoiced on a cycle that does not match the finance calendar, and no single person who owns the vehicle from order to collection.

We contract as one accountable supplier. The service level agreement sits with us. Whether a vehicle comes from our contracted fleet partner network or is sourced to specification, the ordering, compliance, maintenance coordination, reporting and invoicing run through a single point of contact.

How we work with councils

One point of accountability

Named contract manager and a defined escalation route, so a fleet team is never asked to chase a supplier's supplier. Orders are placed with us and the SLA lies with us, regardless of which vehicle in the network fulfils the request. Where a vehicle is sourced through a partner, that is a commercial arrangement behind the contract, not a handoff of responsibility to the council.

Order to delivery, with acknowledgement timescales

A single workflow from first enquiry through specification, confirmation, delivery, in-life management and collection. Every order is acknowledged against an agreed timescale rather than a best endeavours promise, and the same record follows the vehicle through to off-hire, so utilisation and cost can be reconciled at any point in the hire.

Compliance pack on delivery

Every vehicle arrives with its documentation rather than a promise to follow: MOT status, tax, date of last inspection, and LOLER certification where lifting equipment is fitted. Each vehicle is delivered with a driver familiarisation guide specific to that model, so a driver unfamiliar with the vehicle is not working it out in a depot yard.

Maintenance and downtime

Planned maintenance inspections are scheduled and notified in advance, with replacement cover agreed rather than improvised. Defect reporting covers tyres, windscreens, breakdowns and damage through one route, with response times set in the contract. For longer hires, inspection frequency and the issuing of inspection sheets are agreed at mobilisation, not left to be resolved when the first defect appears.

Protecting the operator licence

Where HGVs are in scope, the operator licence is the risk that matters most, and it belongs to the council. Maintenance intervals, inspection records and MOT presentation are managed to protect it, and any compliance breach, including an MOT failure, is reported with the cause and the corrective action rather than reported as a date.

Management information that answers the question being asked

Reporting is built around what a fleet or finance team is actually accountable for: vehicles on hire, cost split by category, days lost to vehicles off road, current and unfulfilled hires, and CO2 data per vehicle. Reports are provided on the contract's reporting cycle, to the deadline set in the contract, because a KPI report delivered late is itself a KPI failure.

Invoicing that matches the finance calendar

Hire charges and invoicing cycles are configured to the authority's requirement rather than to our default. Where a week is defined as five days, with each day charged as a fifth of a week, and invoicing runs on a four weekly cycle, we bill on that basis. Purchase order references, cost centre splits and departmental coding are carried on the invoice so it can be reconciled without a phone call.

Lower emission vehicles

Fleet decarbonisation is a stated objective for most authorities, and hire is one of the few places a fleet can change its emissions profile without a capital cycle. We work to the alternative fuel and low emission specification set by the authority, and report CO2 data per vehicle so the effect is measurable rather than asserted.

Social value delivered where the contract runs

Authorities increasingly score social value as a weighted question rather than a closing paragraph, and rightly treat unmeasurable commitments as worth nothing. We would expect to agree specific, measurable commitments at award against the authority's own social value framework: local employment and spend, and support directed at the communities the fleet actually serves, reported alongside the contract KPIs rather than described once at tender stage.

Why an implementation business is credible here

We are not a broker with a phone. The Wild Axis Group runs UK-wide transport and distribution as a core service, moving time-critical goods into hundreds of sites against fixed delivery windows, with proof of delivery captured at every drop.

The disciplines a council is buying in a vehicle hire contract are the disciplines that business already runs on:

• Delivering to a fixed window across a dispersed estate, where late is a failure and not an inconvenience.
• Working to service levels with consequences, and reporting against them without being asked.
• Evidence as standard, with condition and completion recorded at every visit, which is the same discipline as a compliance pack and an inspection sheet.
• Managing subcontracted capacity without passing the coordination burden back to the client.
• Exception handling, where the measure of a supplier is what happens on the day something goes wrong, not the day everything works.

Vehicle hire is a newer line of business for us. We would rather say that plainly than claim a history we do not have. What we bring to it is an operating model built for contracts where downtime is measured, reported and charged for, and a fleet partner network that supplies the vehicles behind a contract we are accountable for.

Where we work

United Kingdom, nationwide, including rural and dispersed authority estates where delivery and collection distances are the practical constraint rather than vehicle availability.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does managed vehicle hire differ from hiring direct?

Hiring direct gives you a vehicle. A managed contract gives you accountability for that vehicle across its whole time with you. The practical difference shows up when something goes wrong: a defect, an MOT failure, a vehicle off road during a busy period. Under a direct hire the fleet team coordinates between the hirer, the maintainer and the depot. Under a managed contract that coordination is the supplier's job, the service level agreement sits with them, and the reporting arrives without being requested. For an authority running dozens of hires across departments, the coordination burden is usually the larger cost.

Who is responsible for the operator licence on hired HGVs?

The operator licence belongs to the authority, and it cannot be transferred to a hire supplier. What a supplier can do is protect it: maintaining vehicles to the required inspection intervals, keeping records that would satisfy a DVSA examination, presenting MOTs on time and reporting failures with cause and corrective action rather than as a date. Any authority hiring HGVs should ask a prospective supplier how inspection records are shared, how planned maintenance is notified in advance, and what happens to the record trail at the end of a hire. Those three answers indicate whether the licence is genuinely protected.

What should be in a compliance pack on delivery?

At minimum the MOT status, current tax, the date of the last safety inspection, and a LOLER certificate where lifting equipment is fitted. A driver familiarisation guide specific to that vehicle should accompany it, because a driver meeting an unfamiliar vehicle in a depot yard is a safety issue as much as an efficiency one. The pack should arrive with the vehicle rather than following by email, since a vehicle that cannot be evidenced as compliant on the day it arrives cannot safely be put into service, and a delivered vehicle sitting unused is the same cost as a late one.

How is vehicle downtime kept to a minimum?

Mostly before it happens. Planned maintenance inspections scheduled and notified in advance, with replacement cover agreed rather than arranged in the moment, removes the largest predictable cause of vehicles off road. For unplanned events, what matters is a single reporting route covering tyres, windscreens, breakdowns and damage, a defined response time in the contract, and a substitution arrangement that does not require a new order to be raised. Downtime is worth measuring as days lost against total hire days in the period, because that is the number that reflects the operational impact rather than the incident count.

Can an authority carry out its own maintenance and recharge it?

It is a reasonable arrangement where the authority has its own workshop and the work is routine, such as smaller repairs and planned inspections. It needs two things agreed in advance to work. First, the maintenance standard the authority will work to, stated explicitly so that a vehicle returned at end of hire is not disputed. Second, how the work is recorded and recharged, and to what evidence standard. Where records are kept in the authority's own fleet system, the interface with the supplier's records needs settling at mobilisation, not at the point of the first recharge.

What management information should a hire contract produce?

Enough for a fleet manager and a finance lead to answer their own questions without asking the supplier. In practice: vehicles currently on hire, cost split by vehicle category, days lost to vehicles off road, number of current hires, number of hire requests that could not be fulfilled, and CO2 data per vehicle. Unfulfilled requests are the most revealing and the most often omitted, because they measure the gap between what the authority needed and what the contract delivered. Reporting to the contract's stated deadline matters as much as content, since a late KPI report is itself a KPI failure.

How can hire support a fleet decarbonisation target?

Hire is one of the few levers that moves an emissions profile without a capital cycle, because the fleet composition can change at the point of each hire rather than at replacement. Practically that means agreeing which categories can be specified as electric or low emission now, which cannot yet, and being honest about the difference rather than promising a uniform transition. It also means reporting CO2 per vehicle so the effect is measurable. An authority should expect a supplier to distinguish clearly between what is available from stock today and what is a stated direction of travel.

How should hire invoicing align to a council finance calendar?

To the authority's cycle, not the supplier's default. Where a week is defined as five days with each day charged as a fifth of a week, invoicing should reflect that definition exactly, and where the authority prefers four weekly billing, the system should support it without manual adjustment. Purchase order references, cost centre splits and departmental coding should be carried on the invoice so it can be reconciled without a phone call. Most invoicing disputes on hire contracts are not about the rate, they are about a charging basis that was never explicitly agreed.