Agenda item

Report CSD17167

The Committee agreed that the report be considered as a matter of urgency due to late clarification of figures and the need for a decision to maintain prices and notice periods.

The Committee considered a report seeking approval to award a further contract via exemption to competitive tendering to Blue Sky Hosting Ltd to continue to provide a hosting service for the corporate website and associated systems for a period of 2 years commencing 1 April 2018.

In opening the discussion the Chairman expressed concern with the proposals for a further extension to the contract and queried why the market could not be tested and a tendering process pursued.  In response the Director of Corporate Services reported that there was a need to test the market but the Local Authority was close to the end of its current Exchequer Services contract with Liberata and there appeared to be no obvious benefit of not making the current changes.  The Head of Customer Service also highlighted that the Council was in the middle of a web update and that it was important to keep the platform stable.  Members noted that the web upgrade had been going on for some time and stressed that this decision should have been presented to Members with more than 4 months left to the end of the contract to enable time for detailed consideration.  The Director of Corporate Services confirmed that if Members were not minded to approve the decision there was sufficient time to go out to tender and let the service.

In response to a comment from the Chairman surrounding the fact that the current arrangements appeared to be disparate and not well connect with each other, the Director of Corporate Services acknowledged that the current arrangements had evolved and that it would be possible to review them when the Liberata contract was reviewed later in the year.

In response to the Chairman’s query concerning whether this service could be novated over to the Liberata contract, the Director of Commissioning reported that this had been previously considered and there were good reasons why this approach had not been pursued.

The Committee requested that the Portfolio Holder be provided with the reasons why the service could not be novated over to the Liberata contract to enable the Portfolio Holder to be assured that there was no way to novate or pass the contract on prior to any decision being taken.

RESOLVED: That the Portfolio Holder be recommended to:

1. Consider whether the service can be novated over to the Liberata contract prior to taking a decision to extend the current arrangements.

2. Subject to the above, approve the award of contract, via exemption to competitive tendering, to continue he current arrangements for IT hosting for the corporate website and associated systems to Blue Sky hosting Limited.  The proposed contract to be for a period of 2 years with a commencement date of 1 April 2018, at a total cost of £88,818, recovered from Liberata UK through the Customer Services contract.