Decision

The Assistant Director, finance will enter into the contract with Access Paysuite Limited to deliver income management and payment gateway services to the council for a period of up to 3 years.

Reasons for the decision

The council currently collects and allocates all of its income through the pay 360 suite, a software as a service (SaaS) solution provided by Access Paysuite Ltd. The contract for this service was let on the 1st of September 2023 and ran for a period of three years to the 31st of August 2026. This contract is due to expire and in order to continue maintaining the council's key income streams this system's contract needs to be renewed.

The contract renewal will renew the existing software licenses for three years (the minimum term allowed by the supplier) ensuring that the council can accept payments up to and including a transition period into local government reorganisation.

Over the last year finance officers have been working with the incumbent supplier to address some issues with business payment cards. Within the proposed new contract is the renewal of the existing software. Some improvements were considered but have not yet been tested with enough detail to implement such as charging for commercial card use and open banking.

Under the council's contract standing order a contract of this value would require officers to seek 5 quotes or use a compliant framework / Dynamic Marketplace. This appointment is to be made via procurement for housing (pfh) framework for payment software. This Framework allows for direct award to suppliers and is compliant with both the councils contract standing orders and The Procurement Act 2023. All fees collected by pfh frameworks are used to support the creation of further compliant routes to market for the public sector.

Alternative options considered

Change provider via a competitive process: This process would take roughly 12 months and based on the market for this service there is not a significant difference in value between suppliers. We would however expect the process of setting up a new supplier to be resource intensive for finance, digital, legal and procurement officers. Without a significant reason to do so we do not feel that this is the right approach particularly in light of the upcoming changes required in this space for local government reorganisation.

Do nothing: Payments received by the council would need to be processed and allocated manually, currently the finance team does not have the internal resources to do this. The required recruitment to fill this role would significantly offset the savings made by not purchasing the renewed contract.