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Shoosmiths advises on tripartite Shared Services deal

10 March 2008

Northamptonshire County Council and Cambridgeshire County Council have entered into a ground-breaking multi-million pound agreement with Fujitsu Services for an IT platform which will enable the two Councils to share back office transactional services.

It is believed to be the first time two County Councils have collaborated on such a large scale on strategic shared services planning.

Negotiations for the legal aspects of the tripartite arrangement were led on behalf of Northamptonshire County Council by the outsourcing and procurement teams at national law firm Shoosmiths, together with Northamptonshire County Council’s Transformation Manager, Pearl Roberts.

The shared services IT platform offers the two County Councils the opportunity for increased operational efficiencies and cost savings as well as providing an improved platform from which the Councils will be able to provide services to their respective citizens. 

The system was the brainchild of the two Councils, who own the intellectual property rights in it and was developed in conjunction with Fujitsu Services specifically for this purpose.  It has been designed by the Councils as a model for future IT sharing with other large public bodies.

Shoosmiths outsourcing partner David Jackson led the team advising Northamptonshire County Council, assisted by commercial lawyer Lucy Clark and procurement associate Peter Andrews.   Jackson said:

“This was a highly complex deal which has taken almost 12 months to complete.  It involved bringing together the interests of both public and private sector organisations to develop a suite of highly tailored contractual documents which not only had to address the specific needs of the initial three parties, but also had to anticipate other future public body users.

“Both County Councils enjoy a good working relationship and are of a similar size so developing the potential for sharing services via a common IT system makes eminent sense.”

Lead client at Northamptonshire County Council, Pearl Roberts commented:
“We are delighted to have completed this strategic project with our partners at Cambridgeshire.  A lot of hard work went into completing this deal and we were particularly impressed with Shoosmiths’ ability to project manage the deal on our behalf to a successful conclusion.  They helped us to balance the interests of all parties to come up with a truly strong partnering arrangement”.

Cambridgeshire County Council was advised by its Head of Legal Services Tim Farr and its senior contracts solicitor Karen White and Fujitsu Services was advised by in-house lawyer Edward Phillips.

Ends

For further information please contact:
Name: Karen Carter
Phone: 08700 864086
Email: karen.carter@shoosmiths.co.uk

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