Councils exit 10-year Capita deal to spice up choice and venture velocity

South Oxfordshire Council and Vale of White Horse District Council have accomplished a wholesale migration of digital infrastructure from a decade-long Capita contract to an in-house cloud-native mannequin hosted on Microsoft Azure.

The 2 councils introduced their 10-year outsourcing settlement with Capita to an finish and introduced IT again in-house in 2025. The transition, carried out with the assistance of Microsoft companion Node4, noticed the neighbouring authorities within the south of England decouple from a multi-council shared atmosphere to construct a bespoke, cloud-first infrastructure.

The connection with Capita – established in 2015 and dwell by mid-2016 – initially lined 5 native authorities, together with Hart, Mendip and Havant. Whereas the mannequin was initially promoted for its economies of scale, the authorities discovered the shared-tenant structure may stifle innovation and decelerate initiatives. Underneath the association with Capita, any technical change required a “negotiation” section and consensus throughout all taking part councils, as updates have been rolled out universally.

UK councils are more and more migrating away from single managed service suppliers or massive shared IT infrastructures to keep away from provider lock-in, cut back prices and modernise digital companies. This transition normally entails bringing IT administration in-house or shifting to cloud-first internet hosting. 

Current shifts and transformations by UK native authorities embody:

• Derbyshire County Council migrating tons of of purposes from an ageing native datacentre to Microsoft Azure. 
• Vale of Glamorgan Council initiating a transition to a hybrid cloud atmosphere to enhance agility and cut back ongoing reliance on exterior service suppliers. 
• London Borough of Havering and the London Borough of Newham decoupling from a shared IT managed service to tailor techniques to their very own priorities. 

Simon Turner, IT and digital companies supervisor at South Oxfordshire Council and Vale of White Horse District Council, stated the contract was not versatile sufficient to fulfill the councils’ necessities. 

“Our IT wants at the beginning of the contract have been very totally different to what we’d like as we speak,” stated Turner. “A single provider offering IT companies to 5 or extra authorities has to have a minimal bench line. And naturally, modifications made inside that atmosphere must be agreed by the 5 councils to go ahead.

“Everybody has their very own model of what IT is perhaps, and totally different councils have totally different priorities about what they should obtain. So, totally different councils needed to attain various things.”

The councils used the 2 years earlier than contract expiry in September 2025 to plan a rebuild of their digital ecosystem. Procurement was dealt with by the Crown Business Service RM6100 Know-how Providers 3 Lot 2 framework, which allowed the authorities to bypass conventional open tenders and choose Node4 based mostly on its Microsoft specialisms. These centred on transferring purposes and knowledge from digital machines in Capita’s datacentres to Microsoft Azure.

One other core pillar of the venture was a {hardware} refresh that noticed almost 800 laptops upgraded to Home windows 11 and related to the brand new community. These gadgets needed to be solely stripped of current mental property, wiped and reimaged to hitch a brand new inner community.

By deploying Microsoft Intune and Autopilot, the crew established a “laptop computer manufacturing facility” and rolled out 200 refreshed gadgets per week. This standardised method restricted particular person consumer downtime to roughly two hours per individual over the four-week deployment window.

The migration additionally concerned a posh shift of id administration and server infrastructure. The councils moved away from a legacy hybrid Energetic Listing and System Middle Configuration Supervisor atmosphere to a cloud id mannequin utilizing Microsoft Entra ID. This shift was accompanied by a wholesale migration of 790 customers from a deskbound legacy telephony platform to a cloud-native Microsoft Groups Calling system.

Whereas most of the councils’ core purposes have been already software-as-a-service-based, 14 legacy servers remained within the supplier’s datacentres. These have been efficiently replicated and migrated into Microsoft Azure throughout what was described as probably the most vital a part of the exit technique, because it concerned mission-critical knowledge for planning and constructing management companies.

One planning software, which was 30 years outdated and extremely embedded throughout each authorities, required an offline interval of 4 weeks for rigorous stress-testing and database administration (DBA) work on legacy Oracle knowledge. Node4’s specialist knowledge companies crew supplied expertise to make sure the appliance may operate in a contemporary cloud atmosphere.

The venture was accomplished forward of the early July goal, with all customers migrated and the outdated atmosphere switched off by the tip of June. Turner stated the transition was seamless, with no lacking calls through the telephony cutover – an end result he described as “fairly uncommon” for a migration of this scale.

Regaining management of the IT atmosphere has additionally allowed the councils to construct a brand new inner service tradition. When the service was first outsourced in 2015, your complete IT crew was transferred out of the councils’ management. Bringing the service again in-house required standing up a brand new service desk crew utilizing the Halo platform and increasing inner cyber safety sources.

A number of employees members who had labored on the Capita contract have been transferred again to the councils below TUPE preparations. Turner explains that these colleagues at the moment are “placing their toes below the identical desk” however working inside a service-led mannequin fairly than a contract-led atmosphere. This enables the IT division to mirror the precise priorities of the council fairly than ship a service dictated by a third-party settlement.

The councils at the moment are finalising a 30-page moral synthetic intelligence (AI) technique to manipulate the long run use of Microsoft Copilot and Energy BI. This roadmap features a trial of agentic AI instruments throughout the service desk to drive additional efficiencies. Turner notes that whereas an in-house mannequin is probably not cheaper than the earlier supplier’s economies of scale, the flexibility to not path the market justifies the funding.

The transfer additionally positions the councils for potential native authorities reorganisation in Oxfordshire. Having an in-house crew and a cloud-native stack permits the authorities to adapt to structural modifications with out the “slowest member of the pack” limitations inherent in multi-party outsourcing contracts.

The partnership with Node4 has been prolonged to incorporate managed DBA companies, offering the councils with specialist database depth that may be unaffordable as a full-time inner useful resource. Turner concludes that the flexibility to deploy know-how at tempo to fulfill enterprise wants as they come up is now the councils’ main strategic benefit.