02 November 2020 – Minutes

THAME TOWN COUNCIL

Minutes of the Virtual Meeting of Thame Town Council held on 2 November 2020 at 6:30pm by Zoom Conference Call.

Present:

Cllrs B Austin, N Champken-Woods, P Cowell (Deputy Mayor), M Deacock, M Dyer, L Emery, H Fickling, S Francis, K Gregory, C Jones, A Midwinter (Town Mayor) and J Tipping

Officers

C Pinnells, Acting Town Clerk
K Slater, Office Administration Officer / Acting Responsible Financial Officer
L Fuller, Committee Services Officer

1 Apologies for Absence

Apologies were received from Cllrs Dite (personal), Dodds (personal) and Wyse (personal). Cllr Bretherton was absent without apology.

All Members who were present were able to be seen and be heard.

2 Declarations of Interest and Dispensations

There were no declarations of interest.

3 Public Participation and Public Questions

There were no applications to address the Council.
There were no public questions put to the Council.

4 Members Questions (under Standing Order 11)

No questions were raised.

5 Minutes

The minutes of the meeting held on 5 October 2020 were approved.

6   IT Equipment & Support Contract

Cllr Gregory joined the meeting during this item.

It was explained that following the decision at the previous Council meeting to proceed with a cloud-based IT system, the tender process had begun. The specification and scoring criteria had been circulated to Members to consider ahead of this meeting. Six companies returned the tender, with all but one – which was disqualified – submitting all the requested documents and some exceeding the requirements. The Officer report included the scoring percentages for each of the five companies, and the costs for the two highest scoring companies, A and C.

The officer recommendation was to choose Company C as it offered a lower monthly service support cost, scored 6% higher than Company A and was able to install equipment in a month subject to the equipment being supplied in 7 days. It was also recommended that the equipment was purchased rather than leased, as this was more cost-effective.

Some of the Town Council services such as the Rialtas (Omega) finance software and mapping software were not currently cloud-based which would mean there would be an increase of £3k per year against the existing IT budget, however there would be a saving of approximately £1.5k when they did, hopefully within the next 12 months. The £7k budgeted for the new server would be used towards the purchase of the new equipment.

Following the Prime Minister’s announcement over the weekend regarding a second national lockdown, it was noted that there may be a delay in supplying / installing the equipment and providing the staff training, which may be able to be conducted online. Officers would confirm the timeline with the successful company in light of the new lockdown restrictions as the tender documents had been supplied prior to the announcement.

RESOLVED that:

  1. Company C be appointed as the IT Equipment and Support Service Provider for the next 5 years.

 

 

The meeting concluded at 6:43pm.

 

 

Signed ………………………

Chairman, 10 November 2020