Funding Approval for Airwave radios and associated Equipment

This paper seeks MOPAC approval for the allocation and release of £7,677,329 of funding to cover the cost of replacing Airwave radio terminals and associated Equipment. This replacement is necessary for the following reasons:

• to ensure all users of Airwave continue to have fully supported and operational radios providing mission critical radio communications on the Airwave service until successful transition to the new Emergency Services Network (ESN)

• the Home Office ESN programme has suffered significant delays and the final delivery date remains uncertain, so the MPS are likely to be reliant on Tetra radios until at least the end of 2022, possibly 2025.

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime is recommended to:

1. Approve the purchase of Airwave radios and associated Equipment to replace the current Equipment at a cost of £7,677,329, made up of £5,819,806 capital (funded within the capital plan), £1,660,523 of capital (funded from NCTPHQ) and £197,000 project revenue (funded in the Digital Policing Project Revenue budget).

2. Approve the direct call off of radios totalling £6,106,879 from Sepura Ltd, using approved contract SS3/12/123 which included headroom to allow additional radio purchase orders.

3. Approve the award of a direct call off contract to Motorola worth £936,200, for an initial period of 5 years, from February 2020 to February 2025 with an optional extension period of 12 months, for the supply of Software licenses and services from the Police ICT Company (PICTCO) National Tetra Framework Agreement.

4. Note the use of agreed conditions precedent, to allow a purchase order to be raised within the price drop window closing 31st December 2019 and realise the saving.

1. Introduction and background

1.1. The Home Office Emergency Services Network (ESN) programme has suffered significant delays to a point where the MPS (and potentially all UK emergency services) will remain dependent on the Airwave network until at least December 2022, probably longer.

1.2. The Police ICT Company (PICTCo) created a national police procurement framework in order to leverage the best prices for UK police forces. This framework was approved and price drop options published on 23rd November 2019. The two suppliers on that framework are Motorola and Sepura.

1.3. As a critical enabling technology it perfectly aligns with and supports the MPS Strategy in Protecting London from terrorism and Tackling serious and organised crime.

1.4. The replacement Tetra radio deployment will be planned and documented in detail and in a collaborative manner with OCU Commanders, Digital Policing, user site representatives and other National User Organisations. The project will review lessons learned and seek advice, from similar recent deployments, to ensure minimal business impact and a positive police officer experience.

2. Issues for consideration

2.1. This information is contained in the restricted section of the report.

3. Financial Comments

3.1. The planned spend of £7,677,329 consists of £5,819,806 capital (funded within the capital plan), £1,660,523 of capital (funded from NCTPHQ) and £197,000 project revenue (funded in the Digital Policing Project Revenue budget).

4. Legal Comments

4.1. The Mayor’s Officer for Policing Crime is a contracting authority as defined in the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (“the Regulations”). All awards of public contracts for goods and/or services valued at £181,302 or above must be procured in accordance with the Regulations. This report confirms the value of the proposed contract exceeds the threshold. Accordingly, the Regulations are engaged.

4.2. The Procurement Strategy and the proposed procurement route is to enter into a call-off contract under the Police ICT Buying Company (PICTCO) Framework Agreement (the National Airwave Terminal Framework Agreement) dated 15 November 2018. This Framework Agreement allows all Police Forces in the UK to directly enter into a call-off contract under LOT 1 for TETRA hand held terminals, vehicle terminals, accessories and associated services. The Framework Agreement has been compliantly procured by PICTCO in accordance with the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and the MPS are a permitted user of the Framework Agreement. Therefore, this call-off contract is compliant with the Public Contracts Regulations 2015.

4.3. Paragraph 4.8 of the MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) has delegated authority to approve business cases for revenue or capital expenditure of £500,000 or above.

4.4. Paragraph 4.13 of the MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) has delegated authority to approve all requests to go out to tender for contracts of £500,000 or above.

4.5. To ensure MOPAC are not bound to enter into a contract until it is ready to do so conditions precedent must be agreed. Conditions precedent are conditions agreed between the parties which must be met before the contract is entered into. In this case MOPAC will need to ensure that the conditions precedent include:

• all relevant requirements of MOPAC which must be met by Sepura;

• confirmation that should the conditions precedent not be met within the required timescales then the purchase order can be invalidated by either party in writing and no payment shall be made; and

• confirmation that MPS shall not be responsible for any costs or charges until such time as the conditions precedent are fulfilled and the contract is in force.

4.6. Paragraph 7.23 of the Scheme provides the Director of Strategic Procurement has consent to approve all proposals to award of all contracts with the exception of those called in through the agreed call in procedure. Paragraph 4.14 provides the DMPC reserves the right to call in any proposal to award a contract valued at £500,000 or above.

5. Commercial Issues

5.1. Value for money will be achieved by utilizing the national procurement framework developed by the Police Information and Communications Technology Company (PICTCo), ensuring the MPS attain the best possible price for hardware.

6. GDPR and Data Privacy

6.1. The MPS is subject to the requirements and conditions placed on it as a 'State' body to comply with the European Convention of Human Rights and the Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018. Both legislative requirements place an obligation on the MPS to process personal data fairly and lawfully in order to safeguard the rights and freedoms of individuals.

6.2. Under Article 35 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Section 57 of the DPA 2018, Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIA) become mandatory for organisations with technologies and processes that are likely to result in a high risk to the rights of the data subjects.

6.3. The Information Assurance and Information Rights units within MPS will be consulted at all stages to ensure the project meets its compliance requirements.

6.4. The project does not use personally identifiable data of members of the public, so there are no GDPR issues to be considered.

7. Equality Comments

7.1. The work covered by the approval recommended in this paper is to replace end of life and out of warranty equipment. There are no Equality or Diversity impacts associated with this work.

8. Background/supporting papers

8.1. Report