Issue details

The council is in a contract with NEC Software Solutions Ltd for its revenues and benefits IT back-office system until 31 March 2025. Find out more about NEC.

The system is a core back-office system and enables processing of council tax billing, business rates billing and underpins the housing benefit and council tax support the council provides to local residents on low incomes.

To enable the council to remain in compliance with legislative changes relating to council tax, business rates and benefits, as well as deliver new initiatives relating to council tax support, regular database updates are required.

The council needs to procure additional database administrator (DBA) support to enable ongoing upgrades vital to ongoing and annual billing.

The council has no in-house DBA skills, and an analysis on alternative options has been conducted and due to the necessity for the system to function on a daily basis, and the high risk of any downtime, it has been determined that the most appropriate solution is to procure the support direct from NEC Software Solutions Ltd.

The additional support can be met from within existing revenue budgets (See appendix 1 – confidential).