Capita, the company recently announced as Birmingham City Council’s preferred bidder for the Business Transformation Strategic Partnership, is saying it’s expecting pleasing results for 2005 and further sucess in 2006.

The partnership agreement sees first the city council’s IT functions going out to a private sector ‘Joint Vehicle’ supplier (owned jointly by Capita and the council, with Capita probably taking the majority), later other functions may follow.

Despite other claims made in the press, the council’s senior management have given assurances that at this time it is just a preferred bidder situation and there is still a chance that the deal might not go ahead or that the other bidder (IBM) could come back into the frame. Many within the council have felt that the deal has been fait acompli for some time. A number of groups raised concerns to the Scrutiny committee of the council but they declined to call the decision in for consideration.

Until recently details of the deal have been cloaked in secrecy, confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements, as the council heads into the home straights information is coming to light, and with it concerns over what this means for Birmingham.