NHS Test and Trace: Serco

(asked on 13th May 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to further extend the contract with Serco for NHS Test and Trace; and whether a further extension would breach the maximum value as stated in the original contract.


Answered by
Jo Churchill Portrait
Jo Churchill
Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
This question was answered on 26th July 2021

The Department has two contracts with Serco in relation to COVID-19. The first is for the provision of facilities management services to support the operation of testing sites. The contract was let in March 2020 for an initial term of six months to September 2020. The final cost was £47.9 million. It was extended from 1 October 2020 to 30 April 2021 for an expanded service with a final outturn against the budget of £208 million of £209.3 million. This was as a result of additional support required such as testing at Dover. A contract extension was agreed to ensure service continuity of the facilities management service until 23 July 2021 whilst a new procurement exercise was undertaken. The value of this extension is £97 million.

Following a competition on the Crown Commercial Services Framework for Facilities Management, Serco was awarded a contract on 25 June to continue providing these services with a value of up to £322 million for a 12 month period with an option to extend for six months. Given the number of site transitions this involves, we are currently finalising a further contract extension of 24 days to ensure that all sites will be fully transitioned and mobilised under the new contracts by 16 August.

The second contract is for the National Health Service call handling service to support the tracing initiative. The contract had a maximum value of £410 million to cover the initial period and any and all extension periods undertaken up to a period of 12 months. The contract was extended for its full term to the end of May 2021. The actual outturn expenditure on this contract was £358 million. The contract has been extended for a period of six months from 1 June to the end of November for a maximum value of £66 million.

The contract has been extended for a limited period so that there would not be a gap in the tracing service during a crucial time in the pandemic.

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