BT lands Cornwall outsourcing deal

Cornwall Council has voted in favour of outsourcing telehealth and telecare services to BT as a part of a shared service programme it hopes will generate jobs.

The council’s planned £800m strategic partnership with BT was put on hold earlier this year after councillors voted in favour of not proceeding to the final tender stage until the deal had been debated and approved by a meeting of the full council.

In a meeting earlier this week, the council voted on revised versions of the deal, ending up in favour of a “slimmed down” version.

According to a council statement this will: “involve the transfer of fewer council staff and services, but will still enable the authority to work with the company and its health partners to attract investment and create new jobs by developing areas such as telehealth and telecare.”

Under the new plan, IT services, document management, payroll, and telehealth services will be run by BT.

Councillor Sue Nicholas told the chamber that it was essential that the council’s health partners could trust in the decision.

“What’s important with an ageing population and the rural community we have, is telehealth and telecare systems everyone can link into,” she said.

“It’s imperative at the times of budget cuts both for ourselves and for our health partners that there’s an efficient and integrated modern health and social care system for the IT and everything else that goes with it.”

Cornwall Council said in a statement to EHI that the option it had chosen would enable it to, “work with health partners and BT to develop telecare and telehealth and achieve additional savings by further integrating health and social care services.

“The council has spent the past eighteen months developing a proposal to enter into a partnership with health organisations and a private sector company to help generate savings to protect against further cuts in government funding and attract investment and jobs into Cornwall," it said.

Originally, the council had issued invitations to tender to both CSC and BT, but CSC pulled out in October after a council meeting saw leader Alec Robertson voted out of office and replaced by his former deputy Jim Currie.