Lawyers from the Liverpool office of DLA Piper used their extensive local government and outsourcing knowledge and experience to secure best value for Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council in one of the UK's largest local authority outsourcing projects.
A team led by Sarah Bell negotiated two ten-year agreements with private sector partners totalling circa £300m. The first sees Capita Symonds Limited take over the provision of the Council's Technical Services, which include street lighting, highways maintenance, estate management, architectural services, civil engineering and drainage.
The second transfers a substantial financial and information services function to arvato Government Services (Sefton) Limited and involves customer services, revenues, benefits, accounts payable, payroll, pensions administration, transactional HR and ICT.
To support the delivery of these services, a significant number of Council employees have transferred to Capita and arvato.
Both agreements promise substantial benefits to the Council and the borough of Sefton. arvato, for instance, has committed to delivering savings of over £15m on services - and will invest over £4m in IT infrastructure to help further improve key services to residents in the borough.
"The pressure to deliver good quality council services whilst making the most effective use of budgets has recently encouraged many councils to contract out key services," said Sarah Bell, a partner at DLA Piper.
"Our job was to negotiate these agreements to ensure a fair long term partnering arrangement for all parties involved the agreements are great news for the people of Sefton, securing cost-effective services which will continually improve throughout the term. It's also great news for employees who transferred under TUPE as they have the assurance of a no-compulsory redundancies deal.
"We worked alongside the Council's negotiating team and brought the two agreements to a close simultaneously. The project had a 12 month timescale - which was certainly challenging given the size and complexity of the arrangements. The project was enormously satisfying because we achieved all our objectives for Sefton and, of course, had some fun along the way!
The DLA Piper team included Nicola Wignall and Gemma Cowap (Commercial), Ben Miller (Pensions), Steven Norris (Procurement), Philip Rooney and Rachael Hughes (Real Estate) and Helen Hall (Employment).
Caroline Elwood, Sefton Council's Legal Director, said: "The transfer of functions through our Major Service Review was a major piece of work over a many, many months.
"Thankfully, the expertise and dedication of all those involved ensured we were able to achieve the desired outcomes in everyone's best interests.
"Ensuring that the contract documentation was drawn up correctly was vital in protecting the council's interests within the new partnerships. The experience and knowledge of the DLA Piper team played an important part in this detailed process."