Decision details
Fastershire Stage 3 Lot 1 Cotswolds Contract Closedown
Decision Maker: Assistant director Corporate Support (Historic)
Decision status: Recommendations Approved
Is Key decision?: No
Is subject to call in?: No
Purpose:
The Stage 3 Lot 1 contract covering the
central Cotswolds was signed in 2015 and was the first contract of
its kind to be agreed with Gigaclear.
The contract was largely and successfully delivered by 2017.
Including consequential coverage, 9,565 properties now have access
to full fibre broadband as a result of the contract. 4,383
households and businesses are actively consuming those services
giving a current take up rate of 46% rising to 51% of the
contracted premises. It is also the primary reason that the
Cotswolds District has the second highest volume of Full Fibre
access of any rural district in the country.
Whilst the outcomes have been successful, accepting the closure of
the delivery phase of this contract and the release of the final
payment has been an ongoing issue for at least 2 years.
The process has been hindered by the use of Address Point
Referencing (APR) to determine what constitutes a property within
the contract and the more recent switch to the alternative Unique
Property Reference Numbering system (UPRNs). As a result, a number
of APR records do not have a corresponding UPRN. Furthermore,
Salesforce (the system used by the supplier, report service
capability) does not recognise all of the UPRNs or addresses where
there is a match to a contracted APR property. These issues have
made it extremely difficult to close the project out.
The Fastershire Project Board agreed in December 2018 that a figure
of £52,090 should be withheld from the final payment to
account for the various descopes that have taken place. More
latterly in June 2020, the team informed Gigaclear that it was the
project’s intention to withhold an additional £3,500
for each contract record where a case could not be made that
service was available.
Gigaclear submitted their last Lot 1 data for assurance on 28
September 2020. A detailed assessment took place to confirm as much
of the delivery as possible given the challenges outlined above
regarding address referencing. This resulted in only 190 of the
original 6,495 APR references being either unmatchable or not
showing as Ready for Service. A further assessment used GIS
analysis to understand how far the physical locations of those APR
records (which could not be matched) are from the funded network.
The results were as follows:
• Type A: numbering 30 premises of the original records did
not match to a UPRN. It was concluded that these could be connected
should they still exist or are now recognised as something
else.
• Type B: numbering 124 premises were within 300m of
Gigaclear’s network. It was concluded that these would be
servable should they become visible in Gigaclear’s
data.
• Type C: 9 premises of the original records were deemed to be
300-999m from Gigaclear’s network. It was decided that if
Gigaclear confirmed in writing that should any of these request a
service that a) they would be served and b) that a non-standard
installation fee would not be charged, they should also be
considered to be Ready For Service.
• Type D: totalling 27 premises of the original records were
neither RFS and/or are over 1km from the Gigaclear network.
Therefore they should carry a descope penalty of £3,500 per
premise.
On this basis an offer was made to Gigaclear to close the contract,
subject to Gigaclear assuring the Council that all 133 premises
<1km from the network (types B and C) would be offered a service
with a standard installation fee. This would result in:
• Fastershire rendering 163 premises of the unaccounted
records as RFS in its baseline and re-categorising the 27 as
‘still to do’;
• Adding £94,500 to the £52,090 funding to be
withheld to account for the 27 locations that have not been passed;
and
• Issuing the Milestone Achievement Certificate for Milestone
5 and releasing a final payment of £616,314 to
Gigaclear.
Gigaclear have now responded with their own final analysis. The net
result is that the figure to be withheld slightly increases to
£150,090 making the final payment due £612,814.
As the overall impact is only marginally different from the offer
made, it is recommended that no further time be dedicated to the
exercise. Furthermore, to close the contract, it is recommended
that the M5 Milestone Achievement Certificate is issued, the final
claim for £612,814 is assured and paid and a Deed of
Variation is signed to detail the reduction in subsidy and the full
list of descoped APR records based on Gigaclear’s final
analysis.
Contact: Natalia Silver, Service Director - Corporate Services Email: nsilver@herefordshire.gov.uk Tel: 01432260732.
Publication date: 26/02/2021
Date of decision: 24/02/2021
Accompanying Documents: