Blackburn with Darwen Council has approved a new IT contract worth more than £300,000 without going through the usual tendering process, so that it can better align with other authorities ahead of the delayed local government reorganisation.
The council's Strategic Director of Children and Education has approved a contract with System C for its Liquidlogic Children's System (LCS) and Early Help Module (EHM) until March 31, 2029.
According to the delegated officer decision report, the system is the authority's "key line of business application for children's social care" and supports statutory safeguarding functions, case management and reporting requirements.
Importantly, it is the same system used by Lancashire County Council across the region, including in the districts that Blackburn with Darwen is expected to form a new authority with: Rossendale, Hyndburn, Burnley and Pendle.
Officers said the software "ensures that social workers are following the statutory processes that are embedded in the system which promotes best practice by delivering outcomes for safeguarding children".
The report states that the contract has a total potential cost of £308,448.87 over three years, with a fixed annual inflationary increase of five per cent.
The deal is being awarded directly through a Crown Commercial Services framework rather than through a competitive tender process. A major factor behind the decision is the expected shake-up of local government in Lancashire.
The report says: "Currently the system is used by Lancashire County Council and positive engagement has already been had around how they will support us in the future with Local Government Reorganisation (LGR)."
It adds: "By having the same system moving forward this will also allow more possibilities for information sharing across the new authorities that will be established as a result of LGR."
The authority has also revealed that the prospect of reorganisation was a key reason for rejecting consideration of a replacement system.
Under the section on options considered, officers wrote: "It is estimated that replacing the system would be a two year project and come at considerable cost to the Council."
The report continues: "With LGR coming in April 2028 and given that the current system is used across Lancashire this was not an option."
While it was announced earlier this month that the LGR process would be ‘paused’ in Lancashire, pending a review process that could see major changes to the proposed ‘Pennine Lancashire’ mega-council, no updated timeline has been provided by the Government.
This means that, for timely reports and decisions of this nature, the likely abolition of Lancashire’s 15 councils still has to be taken into consideration.
Reorganisation aside, officers also argued that remaining with the existing supplier represented better value than a shorter-term arrangement.
While the approved contract includes annual five per cent increases, the report says System C indicated that a one-year renewal could have led to substantially larger price rises.
The decision notice states: "If the Council decided to go for just a single year contract, then the supplier reserves the right to increase pricing by 15% per annum."
The report also highlights how heavily embedded the software has become since it was originally implemented in 2008.
According to officers, the supplier has "fully embedded integrations with the Council's existing systems and a detailed understanding of the Council's operating environment, data structures, and service pressures".
They added that retaining the incumbent supplier would "avoid the need for large-scale system reconfiguration and reduce the risk of service disruption".
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The report says "significant investment has been made over the years in configuring system forms, templates, workflows, and integrations with internal and external systems", warning that moving elsewhere would result in the loss of that investment and require "substantial redevelopment effort".
Officers concluded that allowing the contract to lapse was not a realistic option because the software underpins statutory children's services functions.
The report states that losing the system "could result in a significant risk to vulnerable people across the borough, and in some extreme circumstances, a risk to life".
It adds that mandatory reporting to the Department for Education would no longer be possible if the contract were allowed to lapse.
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