Decision details

With the approval of the Chairman of the Growth, Environment and Resources Scrutiny Committee and the Monitoring Officer, the urgency procedure, and waiver of call-in procedure have been invoked to suspend the requirement to publish the decision on the forward plan for 28 days and subject the decision to a three day call-in period. These procedures have been invoked in order to meet critical timescales for the urgent procurement of these services. The decision was originally on the Forward Plan KEY/30AUG21/01, however, the decision was abandoned due to an incorrect value included within the Issue Details.

The Cabinet Member:

1.    Authorised the urgent award of a contract for the provision of cloud-based servicesto host the Council’s revenue & benefits software application to Capita UK Limited procured through the Kent Commercial Services Framework Agreement.  The contract implementation and mobilisation shall commence on 1 May 2022 in preparation for service provision between 1 October 2022 and 31 March 2028 at a contract value of £1,149,393.00.  The contract shall have an option to extend for two 12 month periods at a value of £195,035.00 per extension year.

2.     Authorised the Director: Customer and Digital Services to vary this Contract if required, subject to approval by the Director of Law and Governance (or authorised officer’s) and the Corporate Director of Resources.

The Council do not have the required expertise to continue to support the infrastructure the Academy Revenue and Benefits application runs on.

The council are required to keep the Capita One Revs & Bens system (Academy) upgraded so that we are using the latest version to remain compliant with legislative changes. The latest version of Academy will no longer be compatible with the Solaris server operating system in use by the council. Therefore, we are urgently required to get a contract in place with the supplier by the end of April 2022 to allow them to begin the 8-month migration project to their fully supported SaaS solution. Failure to complete the project by December 2022 will result in the council not being ready for the next year of council tax billing which will adversely impact capital & treasury income, revenue and cash flow.

The cost of seeking an adequate disaster recovery solution for the Academy application would greatly exceed the cost already put forward by the supplier.

The supplier is best placed to host and support the application and the required ICT infrastructure.

The Council is therefore provided with an effective ICT service which is:

·         Stable;

·         Flexible;

·         Adaptable;

·         Resilient; and

·         Appropriate to the needs of the Council in the medium to long term.

The Council are utilising the Kent Commercial Services framework, which permits the Council to call-off services. The framework covers the scope of services required and allows a direct contract award to be made. The process for direct award under the framework has been followed.

Do nothing and accept that ICT failures will occur that will negatively impact the Revenue & Benefits service – rejected by the service

Implement redundant ICT infrastructure on premises in Orton to act as a fail-over, this option was rejected by ICT due to the complexity and by finance due to the increased costs. Even then it does not meet all the project objectives as would still require the council’s ICT staff to support.

Consider other providers by putting the whole Revenue & Benefits system out to tender – This exercise would take 1-2 years to complete and was rejected due to the demand this would require from the service and the cost of implementing a completely new system. Which seems unnecessary when the service are comfortable with the Academy application and the support they currently receive from the supplier.