Agenda item

Report of the Corporate Director of Environment and Resident Experience. To be presented by the Cabinet Member for Resident Services and Tackling Inequality

DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST MADE FOR THIS ITEM:

None

RESOLVED:

That Cabinet:

1.    Approved the commencement of a competitive procurement exercise for the provision of an Out of Hours (OOH) Emergency Contact Handling Service from 1 June 2027.

2.    Approved a proposed contract term of three years, with an option to extend for up to a further two years, subject to satisfactory performance, continued business need and the availability of budget provision.

3.    Noted the estimated annual value of the contract as set out in the Exempt Appendix.

Reasons for the Decision

The Out of Hours service was a business-critical, resident-facing service that enabled the Council to receive, triage and assign all urgent and emergency contacts made outside normal working hours to the relevant on-duty team or contractor. This included evenings, overnight periods, weekends and bank holidays. The service helped to protect resident safety by ensuring urgent issues were routed appropriately, while protecting on-duty staff from receiving out-of-hours calls that did not meet the emergency criteria. The procured provider also formed part of the Council’s wider business continuity arrangements by providing additional contact-handling resilience for daytime services where required, including where the Council’s telephone lines were disrupted or during periods of exceptional demand, emergency incidents or other circumstances affecting normal daytime contact routes.

The service also enabled the Council to meet statutory responsibilities arising outside normal office hours, including duties under homelessness legislation to respond to households that might be homeless, eligible for assistance and in priority need, together with wider responsibilities relating to safeguarding, emergency accommodation, adult social care, children’s services and civil contingency responses. Maintaining an effective Out of Hours contact-handling service was therefore necessary to ensure that residents could access urgent Council support when needed and that statutory functions could be discharged without avoidable delay.

A competitive procurement was required to secure a compliant, sustainable and value-for-money long-term service from June 2027, when the current contract with Capita was due to expire.

Through the procurement process, the Council would review and, where appropriate, strengthen the service specification, reconfirm operational pathways with service areas, establish a commercial performance management framework, ensure that future service provision reflected current and emerging resident needs, and ensure that the contract allowed for reductions in contract costs in line with any reductions in demand. Such reductions were expected to be supported by the Council’s introduction of a voice-based digital triage tool.

The recommended approach enabled the Council to test the market, benchmark quality and pricing, secure best value, and promote service stability through a longer-term contract.

Although the procurement process was led by Customer Services, and the Out of Hours supplier would continue to be contract-managed by Customer Services, the cost of the contract would be met through the budgets of the three principal service areas that used the provision. These were Customer Services (General Fund), Homelessness (General Fund), and the Housing Repairs Service (Housing Revenue Account).

Alternative Options Considered

The following options were considered before recommending a competitive procurement for a new outsourced Out of Hours (OOH) service.

Option 1: Do Nothing

This option was not recommended.

Allowing the current contract to expire without securing future Out of Hours provision would have created unacceptable risks to resident safety and to the Council’s ability to respond to urgent issues outside normal office hours.

Option 2: Bring the Service In-House

This option was not recommended.

The proposal involved establishing a dedicated Haringey Council Out of Hours operation. Previous modelling indicated that an in-house service would have been materially more expensive than the outsourced model. In addition, an in-house arrangement would have reduced the additional business continuity resilience provided by an external supplier in circumstances where the Council’s daytime systems or services were disrupted.

Option 3: Purchase the Service from Another Council

This option was not recommended.

The proposal involved paying another local authority to provide out-of-hours emergency contact handling services for Haringey residents. However, no affordable option was identified. A shared service involving one or two councils would not have achieved the same economies of scale as established suppliers operating across a larger national client base. There were also resilience risks associated with London-wide incidents, such as extreme weather events, where multiple boroughs could experience increased out-of-hours demand simultaneously.

Option 4: Continue with Short-Term Extensions

This option was not recommended.

Continuing the current arrangements through further contract extensions or interim measures would not have been compliant with procurement regulations. As a result, this option was discounted.

Option 5: Procure a New Outsourced Out of Hours Service (Preferred Option)

This option was recommended.

The Council proceeded with a competitive procurement for a new outsourced Out of Hours service, operating within the strongest possible ethical and social value framework, for an initial three-year term commencing on 1 June 2027, with an option to extend for a further two years.

This approach provided the best balance of compliance, value for money, resilience, service quality, transparency and deliverability.