Blackburn win reflects Capita’s Local Government Strategy

Capita has been selected as preferred bidder by Blackburn with Darwen Council for its technical services partnership, vindicating the company’s decision to include highways, property and schools improvement inside the local government business (see here).

The partnership, expected to be worth at least £60m over five years, has the potential to extend for another five years. Capita will be responsible for increasing efficiencies across the council, and will draw upon its non-SITS expertise managing highways and property, and most significantly, helping the council generate new income through the ‘commercialisation of existing services and assets’.

The council is calling the engagement ‘the next generation of partnerships between local government and the private sector’ in that Capita will need to help deliver new commercial opportunities around the development of land, local assets and skills, to transform the entire region.

It’s noteworthy that the council is also bringing in-house its 15 year BPO contract with Capita from June this year, and is moving to a cloud-based platform from Northgate Public Services for revenues and benefits software (see here). So here traditional back-office white collar BPO is going away, and being replaced with assistance in front line infrastructure, assets and revenue growth opportunities.

There is a potentially big prize up for grabs, via a proposal for a Lancashire Combined Authority. Residents and businesses in Lancashire are being encouraged to take part in a countywide consultation (see here). The plan is to generate further business from a framework that will enable all 14 other councils within Lancashire to directly procure Capita’s services for infrastructure and development projects. The framework could potentially generate revenues of £2bn for Capita.

Capita is well positioned to help authorities like this to thrive, by taking on responsibility for transport, economic development, housing and regeneration. Meanwhile, we expect this to be a start of a trend among future local government partnerships. For instance, another provider we have spoken to is in discussions with an authority about how to generate revenue from advertising on council assets. Outsourcers of the future are going to need to deliver more commercial solutions like this for their local authority customers, built around delivering longer-term growth. 

Posted by Michael Larner at '08:35' - Tagged: localgovernment   contracts   transformation