Decision details

To seek approval for a direct award to the Post Office and the variation of an existing Council contract with Capita, to provide services for the implementation of the Council Tax Energy Rebate funded by central government.

To seek approval for the direct award of a contract with a value of £35,000, to the Post Office on supplier terms and conditions for a period of 8 months to provide a Payout service. This service will provide an alternative method of payment for those citizens eligible for an energy rebate where a payment direct to their bank account is not appropriate.

To seek approval for the variation of the existing Capita One Revenue & Benefits software application contract between the Council and Capita to enable the latter to provide the England – Energy Rebate Payment (ERP) Solution 2022 software. This software allow for the provision of data to the Post Office and the payment of rebates via BACS to Direct Debit payers. The estimated value of this variation is £149,000.

1) That the Director of Finance and Commercial Services approves the direct award of the Payout service contract to the Post Office.

2) That the Director of Finance and Commercial Services approves the variation of the existing Capita One Revenue & Benefits software application contract between the Council and Capita, to provide the England – Energy Rebate Payment (ERP) Solution 2022 software.

We have received funding from central Government to provide financial support to households affected by the increase in the cost of energy.

By agreeing the recommendations detailed above, the Council will be able to help households with the increase in energy bills and deliver the scheme the Government has asked us to implement.

Although there will be other suppliers in the market that could potentially undertake the rebate payments via BACS they would need access to the data held within Capita ONE to be able to process the payments.

The extraction of this data would attract a charge for the resources Capita would need to deploy to provide this data which would be in addition to the costs charged by another 3rd party provider which would make a different solution more costly.

As Capita have this data and a readymade solution it makes financial and operational sense to utilise the Capita Business Services solution for the provision of data to the Post Office and the payment of rebates via BACS to DD payers.

Also, after undertaking some research for potential suppliers, it appears to be a very small pool of companies that can assist the Council in processing payments to non-DD payers.

However, these have been discounted as the council is not confident that they offer the capacity to deal with £12m cash payments, can provide an adequately safe and secure environment for the volume and level of these transactions and meet the verification standards required for making payments appropriately.

The Post Office is designed for this type of transaction as they offer other monetary services e.g.  bill payments, banking services, foreign currency etc.  They are also trusted by customers and have the required verification standards due to already processing high value and varied money services.

As the Post Office offers an end-to-end product which can be quickly deployed it makes operational sense to utilise their solution.