Capita has been an outsourcing partner for Barnet Council since 2013 but Labour administration pledged to bring all services back in-house by 2026, reports Grace Howarth, Local Democracy Reporter

Barnet Council has proposed a ‘hybrid delivery model’ for its local services.

The council has gradually been returning a range of outsourced council services from its Capita contracts, which have been in place since 2013.

Services including planning, highways, environmental health, estates, building services, facilities, print, human resources, payroll and finance have so far returned to council control, following the Labour administration taking over from the Conservatives in 2022.

Elements of the customer support group (CSG) contract, namely IT, revenues and benefits including business rates and customer services contracts have been extended to end in June 2026 and September 2026.

At a cabinet meeting tomorrow (Tuesday 16th) councillors will decide the future of these remaining CSG services currently run by Capita.

In an approach described as a “pragmatic service by service review” with a focus on affordability a ‘hybrid delivery model’ is being reviewed for the remaining services.

A report says this model will enable “strategic control, flexibility and transformational capability” while also “considering the financial impact of in-sourcing all services”.

Effectively, services such as IT could be split with some services using an ‘in-house strategy’ and some ‘outsourced operation’.

At an overview and scrutiny committee meeting last Friday (11th) Barry May, a council officer, said: “The key difference with these services are they’re mainly based outside of the borough, they’re mainly shared resources, quite high transactional services, with some differences to the services already brought in-house.”

He added the “hybrid” approach gave residents and the council “the best of both worlds” and that finding a provider to deliver “services in the same way” as they had been previously would be difficult.

Conservative committee member Richard Cornelius asked for reassurance on the cost elements of the approach.

In response, Barry said until a “formal procurement” had taken place a “true picture” of the cost element could not be given.

He added: “Once we have full procurement done, we’ll have full cost, and full terms of conditions and that will come back early next year when we’re making these decisions. We have a year of the contracts left.”

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