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Daily Record
Daily Record
National
Tracy Carmichael

Council ploughs £400,000 into new staff laptops

Council chiefs are spending more than £400,000 on new laptops for workers.

A contract was handed to IT giant Hewlett-Packard to supply 800 of the devices for staff use.

It comes as Renfrewshire Council reports "limited availability and long lead times of IT products due to increased demand since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic".

The authority's director of Finance and Resources and head of Policy and Commissioning awarded the deal to HP Limited in October for supply and delivery of the tech, following a decision to place the order at a meeting in March.

This came after a report to the Finance, Resources and Customer Services Policy Board revealed that the "natural replacement" of laptops had been paused during the pandemic to "concentrate on providing laptops for urgent requests only".

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But it became apparent earlier this year that a crisis could be brewing as staff "anticipated that the council’s current laptop stock will be depleted in a matter of weeks potentially leaving staff without working laptops which may affect council operations."

Members of the Finance, Resources and Customer Services Policy Board were asked to homologate the decision last week.

In a report to the committee, senior procurement specialist Rachel Davison said: "The council requires supply and delivery of 800 laptops for Council staff. Due to increased demand for IT products since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the lead time for delivery of laptops has been greatly impacted causing major disruption to the council’s laptop replacement programme, as orders placed in October and December of 2020 have only been received in August through to September of 2021.

"The Council has anticipated that its current stock is likely to deplete by mid-February 2022. Therefore, a decision was taken to place an order for further supply on 7th October 2021 to ensure the Council was in the queue for delivery when laptops become available."

The lead time for delivery of the devices is 29 weeks on the deal - which is costing the authority £373,600 plus VAT.

Cash will come from the ICT capital budget and the order was placed in line with Scottish Government guidelines on the direct award of contracts for mobile client devices.

Members of the committee gave the green light to the move during a meeting last Wednesday.

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