GP IT and Corporate IT Support for NHS Thames Valley Integrated Care Board

Overview

Thames Valley Integrated Care Board are seeking to directly award GP IT and Corporate IT services under Regulation 41 direct award justifications, s13/s14 set down within Schedule 5 of the Procurement Act 2023. In June 2025 it was announced that NHS Commissioning Support Units would be disbanded and additionally in September 2025 NHS England formally approved the merger of Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and West Berkshire Integrated Board ("BOB") and parts of Frimley Integrated Care Board to create Thames Valley Integrated Care Board. In line with these changes to the NHS landscape, the incumbent supplier of GP IT and Corporate IT services for Thames Valley ICB will cease exist and therefore provide the service from December 2026. Thames Valley ICB has been working in collaboration with Kent & Medway ICB and Surrey & Sussex ICB to develop a model for delivering GP IT and Corporate IT services on a regional basis and this continues to be the long-term ambition once the services are stabilised. However, it has become clear that, in the timescale required, establishing a Regional Operating Model was not feasible and therefore in June 2026 Thames Valley took the view that it needed to put mitigations in place to ensure that the service can remain stable between the cessation of the CSU provision and the eventual transfer into the regional model. The infrastructure provision on which this service is based covers a wide number of NHS organisations and is being moved is being moved to a third party NHS host to ensure transitional stability. The decision to directly award is due to: • The need to put mitigations in place to manage the risks arising from the timescale to join the Regional Operating Model at its inception. • Insufficient time to conduct a robust procurement process as the merged Thames Valley ICB needs to work at pace to mitigate the service gap or material operational disruption from the CSU service cessation. • Some of the services being delivered are subject to NHS Regulation Operators of Essential Services (OES) as such ICB's are required to ensure that there is continuity of these critical health services. • Due to the merger arrangements a single solution is sought for technical reasons which will provide parity of provision across the new geographic structure, this will also lead to shared resources across the GP IT and Corporate IT service structure. • Trusted Technology Partnership has a contract and presence within the cluster currently and is experienced at delivering GP IT services. The merged Thames Valley ICB has considered the risks associated with not being able to do this direct award which include but not limited to: • GP IT infrastructure and support service lines fail due to the complex nature and timescales required to move these to new arrangements • Impact on patient care should GP IT support services be adversely impacted and fail • Management of the Corporate IT services for merged Thames Valley ICB would impact wider health service delivery. • Cyber risks The contract duration is deemed to be the minimum necessary to address the urgent requirement with a contract period of 24 months (2 years) to stabilise services. During this contract term a compliant procurement process will be undertaken. Thames Valley ICB anticipate seeking market engagement during Spring 2027[SN1.1]. Estimated core contract value for 24 months is circa £9.35m excluding VAT. The publication of this notice marks the start of a voluntary standstill period which will run from 07/10/2026 ending midnight on 16/10/2026. No declared conflicts or potential conflicts of interest were identified during the decision-making process