US IT giant signed to new contract that could extend to seven years

Credit: Pxfuel

The Ministry of Justice has opted to retain Xerox as its long-term print services partner, in a deal worth more than £50m.

Newly published procurement information reveals that, on 25 October, the department entered into a contract with the tech firm for an initial term five years. Two optional one-year extensions could take the concluding date of the engagement to 24 October 2028. 

The estimated worth of the deal is £50.1m.

The contract was awarded via the now-defunct Crown Commercial Services framework: Multifunctional Devices, Managed Print and Content Services and Records and Information Management. 

The MoJ signed its deal with Xerox on the final day of the procurement vehicle’s contractual term – which had already been extended by one year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. 

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Xerox is the incumbent supplier, having been initially awarded a contract to provide the ministry with managed print services back in May 2014. That deal reached the conclusion of its maximum-permissible seven-year term in May 2021 – at which point a £3m “deed of variation” was signed,  a non-competitive award which, effectively, extended the engagement with the company for one additional year to allow for the completion of a full tender process for the award of a longer-term deal.

Such a process is now complete, with Xerox having retained the MoJ’s custom.

The new deal covers the provision of multifunction devices, managed print services, and print audits. All services will be delivered throughout the MoJ, HM Prison and Probation Service, HM Courts and Tribunals Service, the Office of the Public Guardian, and all other arm’s-length bodies of the department. 

A dedicated “print room” service will be required at the MoJ’s London headquarters, while HMCTS and the OPG are likely to require “bulk print services”.

The contract said that, while “there is a continuing focus around reducing the need for printing”, the current annual volumes of about 750 million pages per year “give an indication of how critical a print service is for all… agencies and business units”.

It added that a large-scale upgrade of the ministry’s estate of printers is also likely to be required.

“Most of the print fleet will reach end-of-life (EOL) at the end of the current contract extension date in May 2021,” it said. “The majority of the HMCTS estate reached EOL in May 2019 and sourcing parts may not be possible going forward. The cost of maintaining an ageing fleet would naturally increase over time and inevitably lead to more engineer callouts to repair failing devices. Service Desk data and qualitative feedback from business areas supports this trend, in which devices are increasingly failing to provide a reliable service.”

Shortly before the retirement of the CCS print framework last month, a new £850m deal was put in place. The incoming vehicle features 14 suppliers across four lots.