Decision details

Proposed amendments to the Articles of BlueLight Commercial were
received in April 2022 and following review, a number of questions were raised with BLC who arranged for an information workshop inviting all PCCs and their representatives.
Following this, the questions have since been answered and
the proposed amendments are now considered acceptable and can
therefore be recommended to the Deputy Mayor for approval.
1. Are you aware as to whether the Home Office will continue to fund BLC beyond April 2023 and if this is not the case, are PCCs are going to be asked to provide this funding?
BLC response - This will be discussed in the briefing sessions but there is nothing in the proposed Articles that could compel any PCC to contribute to the funding of BLC.
GMCA advice - The amendments are not related to future funding. BLC have been working with Home Office to identify future funding and a paper is due to be considered by the Treasury seeking 2 years specific funding. BLC has Home Office support and is a fundamental part of and written into the 3year CSR bid.
2. If it is the case that PCCs are going to be asked to provide funding beyond April 2023, this will have implications to your proposal to delete reserved matters and the deletion of Article 26.8.
BLC response - The funding issue is not relevant to the proposal to delete reserved matters as the cap on each members' liability is limited to £10 per member.
GMCA advice - The proposed amendment to Article 26.8 has been
withdrawn, therefore it remains that PCC Directors must constitute a
majority of the Directors present and eligible to vote upon proposals
concerning the company’s budget or finances or its strategy.
3. Could you provide clarity on the proposal for BLC to be able to enter into contracts directly as the current position is that the contracting powers sits directly with each PCC.
BLC response - This proposed amendment is intended to be clarificatory only as BLC are already doing this. The amendment formalises the position that BLC can act in the capacity of contracting authority or central purchasing body but the amendment does clearly state that this is only ‘where authorised to do so’ and in each case a Sub-Agreement would be used to ascertain the required authority ensuring that PCCs retain their autonomy. The PCCs will continue to have a direct contractual arrangement with the suppliers
through either a call-off contract or their official purchase order.
GMCA advice - An example of the use of a sub agreement is Fleet.

Following consideration by the Deputy Monitoring officer, the
proposed amendments are acceptable and can be recommended to
the Deputy Mayor for approval, the Deputy Mayor agrees to sign the
proposed Written Resolution to be passed by way of Special
Resolution.