Civica wins Worcestershire shared services deal
Integrator hopes to save money and jobs after it bags 'small but significant' deal for outsourced revenue and benefits
Civica has tied up a shared services deal which it claims will save a trio of local authorities in Worcestershire £3m over the next five years.
Malvern Hills District Council, Worcester City Council and Wychavon District Council have come together with the intention of creating "a centre of excellence in the area to provide services to the three south Worcestershire Councils and other public sector organisations". Civica has been picked as its commercial partner in a project covering the three bodies' revenue and benefits services.
The deal will cover transactional, assessment and other services to the triumvirate of authorities and will also "support other councils as they struggle to maintain services with dwindling budgets". The leaders of all three councils hailed the project's potential to deliver savings while safeguarding jobs in the area.
"With the advent of Universal Credit, south Worcestershire councils were facing the prospect of having to shed a large number of jobs in the shared revenues and benefits service," said Worcester City Council leader Adrian Gregson. "This partnership offers an innovative solution to protecting local jobs while continuing to give the councils oversight of the service."
The estimated savings of the deal are £3m over the course of its five-year term. Civica chief executive Simon Downing claimed the project, coupled with the firm's recent seven-year contract to provide outsourced revenue and benefits services to Gloucester City Council, demonstrates the VAR's capabilities as a partner for the public sector.
"We are delighted to be working with the south Worcestershire councils to create this long-term partnership," he added. "Local authorities face significant challenges to deliver quality services and welfare reform while spending less, and the councils have worked together successfully through an innovative shared service."
Writing in analyst TechMarketView's UKHotViews newsletter this morning, research director John O'Brien characterised the Worcestershire win as "a small, but significant new deal for its platform BPS (business process services) offering".
"Civica is rightly pleased to have secured the win against direct competition from market leader Capita, which has been particularly quiet in R&B (revenues and benefits) for some time now," he wrote. "It builds on Civica's success at Gloucester City Council, which now provides outsourced and on-demand business-process-as-a-service to 15 other authorities."