Serco has been awarded a two-year extension to its strategic partnership contract with Hertfordshire County Council, meaning the successful partnership is set to continue to until March 2021.

The extension – which has a total estimated contract value to Serco of £48m – follows an independent external benchmarking exercise, which concluded that Serco represents good value for money across a wide range of services.

Since the original contract began in 2011, Serco has transformed the way many services are delivered locally, helping the Council to save over £21m. Achievements include delivering an innovative and high-quality Social Care Access Service working to identify and meet residents’ adult social care needs, and enabling local residents to access more Council services online – from reporting highways issues such as potholes to applying for a blue badge.

As part of the contract extension, Serco will deliver further guaranteed savings of at least £1.3m over the two additional contract years, with further possible savings identified in a number of areas. At the same time Serco will bring a number of service improvements to assist the Council in delivering its SMART Digital strategy, including working with the council on a large scale transformation of adult social care to place a greater emphasis on early intervention and prevention, and further enhancing the Council’s online customer service channels for residents, to include web-chat and social media.

During the extension period, Serco will continue to:

• Deliver soft facilities management services for 15 council sites including reception, security and cleaning
• Provide HR transaction services, payroll services and controls for the Council’s employees
• Process all of the Council’s financial transactions
• Provide the Council’s IT services and deliver associated technical support and projects
• Manage the Council’s customer contact centre handling a range of services for local residents
• the Council’s children’s contact service which arranges supervised visits
• Operate the Social Care Access Service and Telecare service, which enables older or disabled people to live independently in their own home

Mark Bennett, Serco Partnership Director, said: “We are very pleased that the Council has chosen to extend our partnership and that an independent benchmark has concluded that our services continue to represent good value for money. We look forward to continuing to serve the local community and innovating to help deliver even better local services at a lower cost to Hertfordshire’s taxpayers.”

David Williams, Cabinet Member for Resources, Hertfordshire County Council said: “It’s important that the county council delivers the best possible value for the residents of Hertfordshire. We have therefore been reviewing the provision of shared managed business support services and a two year contract extension of most of the services delivered by Serco has been agreed.”

“This will bring additional value, reduced costs and innovation from our current service provider, rather than re-procuring contracted services or bringing services back in-house. Financial benefits of at least £1.342m have been identified over the extension period.”