Having directly awarded a new agreement of 18 months to a specialist provider, the health service is set to take overall spending to £78m, more than double the original estimate
Due to “unforeseen” procurement delays, the NHS has signed an effective 18-month extension to a major digital deal initially awarded to support “Covid 19 and related programmes”.
Aire Logic – a Leeds-based tech consultancy specialising in NHS work – began work in May 2022 as part of an initial two-year engagement covering the provision of “end-to-end designing and developing services… [for] the tech and data workstream of the vaccinations programme”.
This encompassed both digital platforms for both Covid and flu immunisations. The deal was valued at £30m, plus VAT.
Having reached the end of its original 24-month term, plus an extension of a further six months, the NHS has retained the supplier for an additional 18 months – in a contract valued at £27.5m and awarded without any competitive process.
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A freshly published commercial notice says: “The services provided under the contract remain the same – being the provision of integrated product and delivery management, technical speciality architecture, business analysis, IT development operations, data quality assurance and test, and user-centred design – however, there has been an unforeseen need to extend the contract for a further eighteen months while the re-procurement, ahead of a planned 2026 award, is completed.”
The notice adds that, over the course of the 30-month agreement beginning in 2022, “there has been a non-substantial amendment to the contract, reflecting the agile nature of the services”.
Across the full four-year span of the engagement between the parties, about £78m will be spent, inclusive of VAT.
The deal was initially entered by NHS Digital, about nine months before it was dissolved and absorbed into the wider operations of NHS England.
