Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council and their Multihog have gained national recognition in delivering best practice at the Association for Public Service Excellence's annual awards ceremony in Liverpool.

Multihog's customer Rotherham MBC have won the Best Service ' Highways, Winter Maintenance and Street Lighting Award despite respected competition from other public organisations showcasing their applications for best practice.

The prestigious award comes at a time when all local authorities are under increasing pressure to be more frugal with finances as a result of increasing budget restrictions. Rotherham's Highway Network Manager who submitted the APSE application explains.

'As local authority austerity cuts have been implemented, budgets have reduced and many areas have come under pressure. It has been imperative that work areas become streamlined but are still able to deliver programmed works and services, whilst maintaining the ability to be responsive. This has been achieved through partnership working, sharing best practice and invest-to-save initiatives.'

The Council has demonstrated the 'invest-to-save' principle with investment in the Multihog MH90 with a view to save in the long term and has been recognised for it.

With the award more local authorities may follow Rotherham's fiscal policy as the Government has committed to invest £28bn in roads in the six years from 2015/16, with crucial investment in maintenance to benefit from £10bn.

The APSE document highlights the Multihogs unrivalled ability particularly on the performance of the road milling application as well as the simple switch to winter maintenance duties for all season utilisation. The report reads:

'The Multihog has proved to be very effective in this work area, due to its versatility:

-Small enough to carry out detailed planing around street furniture

-Reduces the amount of road surface to be removed

-Can travel quickly from location to location making it more efficient than traditional methods”

The Multihog is not only helping deliver excellence in the road repair process at Rotherham but due to the ease of interchange ability of attachments can also help battle the causes of many road defects during the winter period:

'In addition to the milling equipment, the Multihog has a salt spreader and plough attachment. This equipment has been used successfully this winter to pre-treat parts of the highway network prior to snowfall, and also to plough and salt accumulations of snow. As an additional resource to our winter fleet, it has been particularly useful on parts of the network which are not accessible to larger gritters.'

The Local Authority has demonstrated the Multihog's proven track record in all areas of applications from the productive patch planer to the robust winter kit and emphasises the efficiency of utilising one machine for several tasks effectively.

Furthermore, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has committed: 'this government will invest over £28bn over the six years from 2014 in enhancements and maintenance of national and local roads.'

With this in mind many local authorities will have to investigate innovative ways to deliver added value to the Public within their highway maintenance departments and the Multihogs multi-purpose approach has now been recognised to deliver efficiency and excellence.

'Wherever possible efficiency savings are being considered and implemented to provide a lean service that still meets the needs of the public.'

As well as incurring substantial savings with the Multihog Rotherham MBC has also received close to 70 letters of praise from local residents as a result of the effective winter resilience and road planing performance of the machine.

Multihog UK Ltd would like to congratulate Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council on their success and are glad that the Multihog was able to play a crucial role in helping the Council to deliver best service.