Direct Award of Contract to provide an Adults Social Care Case Management System

Description

Torbay Council has direct awarded a contract for provision of its new Adults Services' Case Management System (CMS), to the incumbent supplier of its Children's Services' System. This is a direct award, following the publication of a Voluntary ex ante transparency (VEAT) notice (reference: 2025/S 000-000406 on 07th January 2025, and subsequent internal approval to directly award the contract from Torbay Council's Cabinet. The system will be used by Torbay Council and Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust. Award is made on the grounds that the works, supplies or services can only be provided by a particular economic operator due to an absence of competition for technical reasons. The Council undertook a further competition from Lot 3c of CCS' RM3821 Data & Application Solutions Framework for a supplier for supply & ongoing maintenance of a children's social care CMS. It allowed for the contract to be modified to include future provision of an adult social care CMS, as the 2 systems are required to be compatible with one another. The adult social care CMS was required after the Children's contract was awarded. But due to unforeseen circumstances, including impact of COVID on social care resources there was a significant delay in putting a new system in place. Due to this and increases in the cost of the contract from the previously estimate, the Council considers that it is no longer appropriate to modify the existing contract. However, a compatible system across children's & adult's social care remains. Whilst there are alternative suppliers of CMS's, appointment of a different supplier will result in receiving a solution incompatible with the current children's CMS. The differences in how the systems function will result in additional costs (to make each compatible with one another), difficulties in implementing a new system and the ongoing operation / maintenance of both, which will not deliver best value. This direct award will deliver the following benefits to Council, the system's end users & the public purse: Seamless and more cost-effective integration with the current Children's CMS (Liquid Logic) by utilising the same solution, and cost savings and efficiencies in hosting arrangements by utilising the same supplier. Efficiencies, consistency & effectiveness in reporting capabilities by utilising the same solution and in contract management by having the same supplier for both CMS. More efficient migration of data as, the same system used to be operated across both children's & adult social care, meaning the Council's IT team have experience of migrating data from the old system to the new. The Council will begin implementation planning and data migration from its current system, from July 2025 onwards