Provision of Payroll Services for City of London Academies Trust

The City of London Academies Trust (COLAT or the Trust) is a multi-academy Trust comprising 10 schools (primary, secondary and Sixth Form). COLAT draws upon the best traditions, institution, heritage and historical success of the City Corporation and London.

In the past six years, COLAT has changed significantly by growing to 10 Academies and as such the requirements of the services have evolved, and now the Trust is moving to re-tender the contract to meet new demands.

Each school is responsible for managing their workforce and checking payroll data, with top-level oversight coming from the Trust. COLAT Senior Leadership remain responsible for the appointment and line management of the most high-level appointments within the schools, however responsibility for all others is delegated to the school’s Principal/Headteacher. COLAT schools are based within varying London Boroughs which means that the support staff workforce is enrolled in various pension schemes with differing local authorities. A provider who can understand these nuanced differences and ensure that the service is flexible yet remaining consistent, will be paramount to the success of the contract.

Over the past six years, COLAT has worked to centralise and standardise key business practices across the organisation. Amongst current frustrations is the lack of easily accessible and interrogable workforce data and a lack of interoperability between the HR/Payroll service and other core systems such as the school MIS, or financial management software. Although not a firm requirement, it would be beneficial if the new service could offer such functionality.

In 2018 COLAT appointed a substantive Director of Human Resources, who has taken over the strategic oversight of Human Resources across the Trust. Therefore, the main deliverable required from an outsourced provider of HR has shifted from strategic to transactional. COLAT now requires the consistent and reliable processing of standard HR administration to free up staff time to focus on other tasks.

The contract is scheduled to commence at the beginning of July 2023, with mobilisation from January 2023, and to include trial runs from March 2023. The contract will be for an initial 3 years, with a +1yr, + 1yr extension clause, at COLAT’s discretion (3+1+1).