On Wednesday 20 August 2025, Conrad Hall, Corporate Director of Resources, in consultation with Councillor Zulfiqar Ali, Cabinet Member for Finance, Resources and Environment, made a key decision to award a contract to XMA Ltd for the purchase of 2,072 Windows 11 devices and a related service package. This decision, delegated by the Cabinet on 1 April 2025, aims to upgrade all council devices to Windows 11 before Windows 10 reaches its end of life. The decision is callable until midnight on 28 August 2025 and can be implemented from 29 August 2025.

Windows 11 Device Procurement

The decision was made to approve the award of a contract to XMA Ltd for the procurement of 2,072 Windows 11 devices, along with a service wrapper for provisioning each device, at a total cost of £1.6 million. This procurement is part of the council's technology roadmap programme, which aims to modernise services and achieve sovereignty of its IT service by upgrading all council devices to Windows 11 before the end of life of Windows 10.

The council considered the option of not upgrading the devices, but this was rejected because devices must be replaced to ensure all devices are upgraded to Windows 11 by 14 October 2025 or Extended Support will need to be purchased. The council also considered a new competitive tender, but this was rejected because it was not good value for money for the council to run its own tender when Crown Commercial Service (CCS) holds regular aggregates that provide a compliant route to market and provides further combined purchasing power across other local authorities.

The report broke down the costs as follows:

The service wrapper from the supplier, XMA Ltd, will provide support including:

• White glove and asset tags to be applied
• Management of supporting communications and bookings
• A dedicated service desk for staff to receive hyper care
• Collation of deployment statistics and reporting
• Order processing and deployment/delivery logistics
• Delivery and installation of new devices as per the schedule provided by LB Newham
• Sign off and provision of deployment statistics
• A team of field engineers based in one central deployment location, managing:
  • Engineers to manage collection of old devices
  • Deployment of new devices
  • Scanning of collected devices and recording serials
  • Scanning of new devices to allocated users
  • Asset management recording and validation
  • End user support with on-site LB Newham technical team present
  • Management and transfer of new devices from secure storage to deployment

The Corporate Director of Resources, Conrad Hall, was advised that:

Without adequate support, the quality and consistency of user engagement will decline which increases the risk of change fatigue and disengagement among staff. Leveraging the expertise and knowledge of a team that has carried out this sort of aggressive adoption campaign previously, enables the change, adoption and engagement to keep pace with the rapid hardware deployment needed to achieve the 14 October 2025 deadline for the replacement of the Council's corporate Windows 10 devices with Windows 11 devices.

The purchase will be funded from a mix of existing centralised revenue budget for device refresh and capital ICT disaggregation budget. Approximately 120 of the devices will be rolled out to Newham's LATCos, with a contribution of approximately £0.082m towards the £1.6m cost.

The council's legal team, including Ravi Mudundi, confirmed that the council has the power to procure the contract under Section 111 of the Local Government Act 1972 and Section 1 of the Localism Act 2011. They also confirmed that the CCS Framework allows for contracts to be awarded and by the Council subject to compliance of its provisions.

The Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) under section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 requires the Council, when exercising its functions, to have due regard to: the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under the Equality Act 2010; the need to advance equality of opportunity between persons who share protected characteristics and those who do not; and foster good relations between those who have protected characteristics and those who do not. The council is committed to all of the above in the provision, procurement and commissioning of its services, and the employment of its workforce. In addition, the council is also committed to improving the quality of life and wellbeing for all residents in respect of socio-economics and health determinants. The devices purchased are compatible with accessibility software that is in use across the Council.