Thursday 7th January, 2016

Worcestershire County Council has agreed a seven-year contract with Liberata, a business process service provider, to deliver a range of transformational human resources and finance services to the council and local schools.

The contract with Liberata is worth £5.2 million and will see the company deliver services that will enable the county council to save up to £2.2 million over the lifetime of the agreement. The overall end contract value could be worth up to £23 million.

“Liberata has a strong track record in the successful transition of services and staff into its own operations, including working with other local authorities on similar services. We will now undertake further discussions with Liberata in order to successfully transfer staff and services across from 1 February 2016,” said Councillor Marc Bayliss, Worcestershire County Council Cabinet Member for Transformation and Commissioning.

Worcestershire County Council proposes Liberata delivers the following services:

• Payroll and control services for the County Council, schools and other customers’ staff
• Human Resources transactional services for the County Council and schools
• Schools Human Resources consultancy
• Schools Finance Advice
• Payments for schools and systems support
• Accounts payable and accounts receivable for the County Council, schools and other customers
• Occupational Health
• Technology solution management, maintenance, support and its future transformation
• General ledger application to enable the County Council accounting services
• Process transformation of Human Resources and Finance business processes.

In total, 106 roles in payroll, school Human Resources and finance advice, occupational health, transactional services, payment support and technology maintenance will be transferred from the County Council to Liberata. In addition, Liberata will be taking on 25 apprentices from the local area over the next seven years.

Liberata is planning to create a new base in Worcestershire and further to grow its school services by making them available to other nearby councils and public bodies.