Agenda item

(Internal Resources – Cllr. S Kane) To consider the outsourcing of the Concierge Service – (C-029-2022-23).

(1)        The Cabinet agreed that the Concierge Service at the Civic Offices be outsourced; and

(2)        The Cabinet agreed that the contract be awarded to PCS Group for a period of three years.

The Internal Resources Report Holder introduced the report on the outsourcing of the concierge service. He noted that the Concierge service at the Civic Offices was not a traditional Concierge service, the team had numerous responsibilities including the opening and closing of the building, managing and maintaining our bookable spaces, monitoring the employee car park, issuing security cards, monitoring CCTV and much more. The existing service was structured to be made up of the equivalent of four full time posts (FTE) covering 6:30-22:00 Monday to Friday, with out of hours, on site security being provided by a contractor between 22:00-6:30 on weekdays and across the whole weekend.

Due to various operational and resource challenges, the Senior Leadership Team (SLT) agreed to explore the outsourcing of the Concierge Service at the Civic Offices, by formally going out to tender, to then review bids and make a decision as to whether the Council proceeds to the formal stages of outsourcing.

Out of four contractors that showed an interest, only one of them, PCS Group, put forward a bid. The bid was a strong, tailored and detailed response, scoring 96.5/100 during the evaluation process.

Based on a three year contract, the costs for year 1 and 2 were lower than our current operating costs and year 3 was higher. The savings made in the first 2 years offset the increase in the third year. If the service remains in house, it was likely that by year 3 it would be more costly than outsourcing, as salaries and existing contracts will increase year on year.

Councillor Brookes asked why we had only one bidder in the end. She was told that the other companies that showed an interest were mainly based on the security side and were not suitable for general concierge services.

Councillor Brookes then asked if the new service would also cover reception. She was told that they would at first only cover the concierge duties, but officers would keep this under review on a yearly basis.

Decision:

(1)        The Cabinet agreed that the Concierge Service at the Civic Offices be outsourced; and

(2)        The Cabinet agreed that the contract be awarded to PCS Group for a period of three years.

Reasons for Proposed Decision:

The decision to outsource the Concierge Service was a solution to some operational challenges that the Council had been facing for the past year, particularly around resourcing the service.

The benefits to outsourcing the service are

•           Increased resilience as we will be working with a company that can be scalable to our needs and ensure we always have appropriately trained staff available to cover the shift requirements.

•           The Council has an opportunity to work with a service provider and shape what we want the service to look like, which will improve customer service. This will be measured against feedback that we regularly, informally receive.

•           The Council would have SIA Security trained Concierge on site at all times to support the Welcome Desk Team and the Incident Manager should the need arise.

•           This option provided consistent, stable costs during uncertain times and removes the risk of unforeseen, avoidable, additional costs to the Council.

•           Other miscellaneous costs of running a service in house were removed, such as recruitment costs.

Other Options for Action:

An alternative option would be to work with the People Team and Trade Unions to change the terms of employment for the current team, to include evening and weekend working as mandatory. The Council could upskill the existing team to secure their SIA Security Licences. We could attempt to recruit to the open role(s) by working with the People Team on a new recruitment campaign. This option has been discounted due to the challenges already faced recruiting to those roles. Additionally, whilst the role(s) remain vacant the Council would continue to pay a premium to a contractor for covering those shifts and we could end up back in the same position of being unable to fill those roles.

Another option is to go back out to tender ourselves, instead of using Everything FM, in the hope to reach alternative contractors. This option has also been discounted as Everything FM are specialists in this field, so it is doubtful that the Council would achieve a different result in terms of bids received and we would have only elongated the appointment process, costing ourselves more for a contractor to cover this interim period.