The City Council signed a £83m contract with CapGemini in 2006 to transform IT services and promising £70m savings over ten years. However, a year later the contract was reduced to a £40m project with the abandonment of phase 2.

The City Council signed a £83m contract with CapGemini in 2006 to transform IT services and promising £70m savings over ten years. However, a year later the contract was reduced to a £40m project with the abandonment of phase 2. An investigation by the external auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers, revealed that only £6m savings had been achieved even from the reduced contract, which had claimed £26m savings. Furthermore, the City Council had transferred only 5% of the risk of failing to meet savings targets to CapGemini. The City Council, CapGemini and UNISON representatives had agreed a secondment model for staff during the preferred bidder negotiations but this was overturned only hours before the Cabinet meeting approving the contract.