There is another question mark over whether BT’s proposed Joint Venture with Cornwall County Council will ever get the green light. In October, we wrote extensively on the debacle in Cornwall Council’s outsourcing plans increasingly uncertain when the Council decided to put its plans on hold to give more time to consider the proposals and obtain independent advice. Then, in December, the council decided to instead pursue a slimmed-down JV with BT involving an IT outsourcing contract as well as a JV with BT and regional health bodies to develop a telehealth hub – see here. The original JV proposal had covered a broad range of council services.
Now we learn that one of the organisations involved – Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust (RCHT) – has decided to pull out of the shared services partnership following changes to the scope of the project and “consideration of legal advice”. The remaining organisations are Cornwall Council, Peninsula Community Health (a private company running cottage hospitals) and Cornwall Partnership (the NHS Trust in charge of mental health services). But it appears that the latest development means that all parties will now return to considering the viability of the project. There is much speculation from commentators that the “legal advice” given to RCHT highlighted that the reduced scope of the slimmed down JV contravened EU procurement rules i.e. it should have gone back to a competitive tender.
Something will need to be done; RCHT is well aware that it needs to find an alternative option to develop its IT and health record services. And we shouldn’t rule out BT being involved – we understand that RCHT has partnered with BT and Cisco for some time for fixed and wireless healthcare technology solutions. However, this latest news once again calls into question the appetite for broad-ranging BPO deals in the UK public sector (and indeed for JV arrangements). We see very few deals like this coming to market and suppliers must be innovative in considering new approaches.