Southwark joins London councils’ shared service bringing IT back ‘in-house’

1 November 2017

Southwark Council has joined Brent and Lewisham Councils’ shared IT service, in a break away from years of outsourcing the service to the private sector.

The council finished its contract with Capita over the summer, and this week the new shared service begins. The new Shared ICT Service Member Governance Board met to launch the service last Thursday.  

Cllr Fiona Colley, Cabinet Member for Finance, Modernisation and Performance, said: “This is a really exciting move for Southwark and we’re very pleased to be taking back direct control of our IT, and working with two other councils that share our priorities and understand our business. Southwark Council aims to give its residents high-quality services, but we can only do that if everything is running smoothly behind the scenes. A modern and evolving IT service is crucial to all that we do, especially as our budgets reduce and we do more and more with less.”

The main objective of the new service is to establish a stable, resilient and quality ICT service to deliver modern, reliable, secure, cost effective technology. This supports the council’s plan to become digital by default, and transform where and how council staff work in order to better serve residents.

The existing ICT Shared Service between Brent and Lewisham was developed in 2015 and came into effect on 1st April 2016. The Shared Service was established using statutory powers vested in the Local Government Acts 1972 and 2000 with Lewisham delegating its ICT services to Brent under the governance of a joint committee. Governance arrangements for incorporating Southwark into the Shared Service will be confirmed in due course, but as an interim arrangement, the Shared Service joint partnership board has been established with representatives of the three authorities working on an equal basis.

The decision regarding the shared service was taken by each of the councils’ Cabinets (Southwark 7 February, Brent 13 February and Lewisham 15 February this year)

Page last updated: 01 November 2017

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