Cornwall County Council to BT: Sort out our outsourcing deal or we cancel this summer

Cornwall County Councillor issues ultimatum to BT over failing outsourcing contract

A 10-year outsourcing deal between Cornwall County Council and BT is mired in turmoil, two years after the deal was signed. And councillors are threatening to terminate the contract this summer unless BT fixes the problems in the next few months.

It follows a scathing Strategic Partnership Review in April that criticised the failure of BT to meet the guarantees it provided when the deal was signed in March 2013, just two months before local elections. The deal encompasses the running of IT, human resources, document management and other services for the council, as well as Peninsula Community Health and Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.

The Review indicates that BT has failed to come close to achieving sufficient key performance indicators (KPIs) - with the exception of targets for "contractual baseline savings". KPI measures achieved weighed in at only 64 per cent, while "service transformation" guarantees achieved measured at only 38 per cent, according to the Review.

On Wednesday, independent councillor Andrew Wallis, who opposed the outsourcing deal, wrote a damning blog post following a council meeting. Key performance indicators (KPIs) have not been met on a consistent basis, he wrote, and there is little evidence of service transformation, while a botched Windows 7 upgrade had been delayed and problems continued with network capacity and performance issues.

His conclusion was damning: "BTC [BT Cornwall] has had two years to deliver this contract and have failed. There are only so many second-chances you can give. For me if, by summer, BTC does not deliver its commitments, than I am afraid we must be in the area of looking to terminate the contract. I feel if this was a full private sector deal, the contract most likely have already been torn-up."

In response, BT has appointed new senior managers in a bid to rescue the project.

Tony Collins, investigative journalist and author, who focuses on public sector governance in his UK Campaign4Change blog, has followed the Cornwall County Council and other public sector outsourcing contracts. He argues that part of the problem is that most councillors are unlikely to be around long enough to deal with the problems that might arise should an outsourcing contract go awry.

"Councils will continue to outsource because their officers and lead councillors are unlikely to be in place in the later stages of a contract when they could otherwise be accountable for an administrative, financial and technological mess. In the early stages nobody need be held accountable for anything. Words are sufficient. Promises cannot be tested yet. Guarantees sound impressive," warned Collins.

Unusually, Cornwall is traditionally run by independents, rather than party-affiliated councillors. Today, a coalition of Liberal Democrat and independents are in charge.