UK Public Sector Contracts & Tenders

This Contract Modification Notice relates to the modification of the TRUSTnet contract between London Grid for Learning Trust (LGfL) and Virgin Media Business Limited (VMB) pursuant to Regulation 72(3) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. Following the publication of a voluntary ex-ante transparency notice (2023/S 000-033683) LGfL has extended the duration of the TRUSTnet contract for a period of 10 years from 2028 – 2038 in respect of the lease of dark fibre infrastructure procured under the original award for the balance of the useful life of that infrastructure. The modification is limited to the lease and maintenance of the dark fibre cabling and does not include any additional services provided by VMB pursuant to the TRUSTnet contract. LGfL awarded a contract to VMB in 2014 for the supply and management of transmission services, including (but not limited to) leased circuits, dark fibre, wide area Ethernet and xDSL with bandwidths of 10Mbit/s and above. The dark fibre infrastructure, leased as part of the contract has a useful economic life of 25 years, extending considerably beyond the end of the current contract term, which ends in 2028. LGfL concluded that it was necessary to modify the TRUSTnet contract to allow for the extended lease of the dark fibre infrastructure until 31 December 2038 because any alternative would be uneconomic and would cause significant disruption and inconvenience for users at a time when the users are already experiencing difficult cost pressures. LGfL has determined that a limited modification of the TRUSTnet contract was necessary to protect the interests of those users.

The scope of services includes the installation and configuration of full fibre Business Broadband services with ONT/Modem supply with in-life support cover to London Grid for Learning Trust’s (LGfL) School customers. The services primarily provide secondary backup circuits to the existing primary circuits that will become active should failure of the primary circuits occur. The services shall be provided and monitored of circuit uptime measured on a 24x7x365 basis with a fix-time SLA. 5G reliance is required in the event of outages occurring. The scope includes different bandwidth speeds and will vary on the type of service needed by customers, Bandwidth options available are 150Mbps, 400Mbps, 1Gbps and 5Gbps. Term of the resulting Contract - 5 years (60 months) Procurement conducted under Crown Commercial Services Framework Network Services 2 (RM3808)

This VEAT notice relates to the proposed modification of the TRUSTnet contract between London Grid for Learning Trust (LGfL) and Virgin Media Business Limited (VMB) pursuant to Regulation 72(1)(b) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. LGfL proposes to extend the duration of the TRUSTnet contract for a period of 10 years from 2028 – 2038 in respect of the lease of dark fibre infrastructure procured under the original award for the balance of the useful life of that infrastructure. The modification will be limited to the lease and maintenance of the dark fibre cabling and will not include the additional services provided by VMB pursuant to the TRUSTnet contract. LGfL awarded a contract to VMB in 2014 for the supply and management of transmission services, including (but not limited to) leased circuits, dark fibre, wide area Ethernet and xDSL with bandwidths of 10Mbit/s and above. The dark fibre infrastructure, leased as part of the contract has a useful economic life of 25 years, extending considerably beyond the end of the current contract term, which ends in 2028. LGfL has concluded that it is necessary to modify the TRUSTnet contract to allow for the extended lease of the dark fibre infrastructure until 31 December 2038 because any alternative would be uneconomic and would cause significant disruption and inconvenience for users at a time when the users are already experiencing difficult cost pressures. LGfL has therefore determined that a limited modification of the TRUSTnet contract is necessary to protect the interests of the users.

LGfL was founded in 2001 as a charity to advance education, in particular by providing and assisting in the provision of information and communications technology to London schools for the benefit of the children attending those schools. LGfL’s Objects enable it to provide services to a wide range of beneficiaries including schools, Multi Academy Trusts, Councils, Health Services, the Police, Housing and Community Services. LGfL delivers its Objects by focusing on: 1. Saving Schools Money 2. Keeping Children Safe 3. Protecting and Securing Schools 4. Energising Teaching and Learning 5. Promoting Wellbeing 6. Tackling Inequality In the light of new Department for Education standards and updates to Keeping Children Safe in Education, LGfL conducted a procurement via G-Cloud 13 (CCS RM1557.13) seeking to enter into a contractual agreement to implement an Appropriate Proactive Technical Service for Safeguarding Children in Schools to complement its safeguarding centre of excellence and tie in with its existing expertise and track record in web filtering. The Service provides alerts to schools in line with LGfL’s functionality requirements to ensure that designated safeguarding teams are made aware of individual events and trends helping them to keep children safe online and respond in a timely fashion with informed by clear evidence that can potentially save lives. Alerts may relate to bullying or other peer-on-peer harassment or abuse, child sexual or criminal exploitation and related grooming, as well as markers of self-harm and suicide, radicalisation and a range of other key safeguarding areas As a result of this procurement LGfL have entered into an agreement with a supplier to provide pro-active and re-active safeguarding services. Services include but are not limited to the following; • Automatic Safeguarding and Monitoring software technology • System Service, Development and Training • Safeguarding Incident Management • System Implementation/Integration and On Boarding • Human Review Services Pro-active Monitoring

Pursuant to the publication of a voluntary ex-ante notice on 05/08/2023, reference - 2023/S 000-022840 (VEAT Notice), the Authority has awarded a contract for the provision of a Universal Sign On (USO) Platform and Related Services for a period of 60 months to Atomwide Limited. The Contract period is 22/12/2023 to 21/12/2028 with the option of a 36-month extension for the period 22/12/28 to 21/12/31. The services provided by Atomwide are complex, deeply integrated and dependent on the use of proprietary software that was developed over an extended period. The software is not a commodity product due to its unique nature and its limited market; Atomwide is the only supplier capable of supporting and maintaining it. Consequently, economic operators could not submit competitive tenders for the provision of alternative services without a licence from Atomwide for its proprietary materials resulting in an absence of genuine competition. Following extensive consideration of alternative options, LGfL determined that use of the negotiated procedure without prior notice under Regulation 32(2)(b)(ii) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 was essential for the continued successful operation of LGfL.