IT services relationships at the London tri-borough group of Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington & Chelsea are likely to become more complex following the acquisition of Westminster's IT supplier Vertex by Serco.

Serco said the acquisition last week, for £55m, brings it additional skills and capabilities to support expansion into new areas of middle and back office support and adds further scale to its recently created global services division. In 2002, Westminster city council awarded a £442m 10-year contract to manage its customer services and council tax bills to Vertex, which was then extended in 2011 to 2014. The contract was one of the biggest to be won by Vertex and saw about 300 council staff transfer over to the company. A spokesman for the said that it considers Serco's acquisition of Vertex to be "business as usual" and that it will "look at the contract" closer to 2014.

Source: Guardian