06 Feb 2009
BT says it is suing Essex County Council after the supplier claimed that the local authority terminated its IT outsourcing contract illegally.
Essex brought in BT four years ago in a bid to save money, but council leaders have decided to end the arrangement and bring IT back in-house.
A spokesman for BT said: "We are disappointed Essex County Council has unlawfully terminated our contract. Having discussed the position with our lawyers, we can confirm we will be seeking substantial damages."
The contract still had three and a half years to run.
Public sector union Unison claimed that the authority stood to lose millions of pounds after ditching the deal.
In a report last year, Unison said that council staff were unhappy with the way the work was being carried out by BT.
A spokesman for the council said:
"Essex County Council is determined to deliver better services at a better price for Essex taxpayers. We also will act decisively when we judge that any contract is not delivering value for money and will take appropriate action. This is not something we will shy away from nor avoid."
"BT time and again failed to supply timely support to the Essex County Council staff"
Erm - not quite. The ECC management agreed a contract with BT that specified certain levels of support and response times. BT (mainly) met those targets.
The problem was that the ECC management didn't tell their end-users what the contract specified. ECC end-users were frustrated because they believed that they were entitled to whatever level of service they thought they should be getting - usually far more than ECC management were paying for.
Posted by: Grunt Gruntson 01 May 2009
It disgusts me that BT are to sue a council to grab further taxpayer money to no doubt fund bonus schemes. It is widely known across the Essex business comunity that BT time and again failed to supply timely support to the Essex County Council staff and charged outrageous prices for any 'non-SLA' work. How a company is allowed to get away with this is beyond me.
Posted by: Chris Adams 19 Feb 2009
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