Recommendation 5

The Department appointed a contractor without properly understanding whether it could deliver. The Department undertook a rapid procurement for a grant administrator, who would develop a digital voucher application system for the Scheme. None of the bidders for the contract thought it was possible to fully implement a digital system in time for the launch, and so the Department launched a complex scheme without an IT platform that had been fully developed and tested. The Department’s chosen grant administrator, ICF Consulting Services Ltd (ICF), subsequently struggled to implement the voucher application system, leading to greater amounts of manual processing being needed for applications, contributing to the delays in processing vouchers. The Department felt its procurement process was run successfully overall, despite appointing a contractor which could not deliver the system it wanted. Whereas other bidders thought fully implementing a system would take at least 15 weeks, ICF thought it could do it in six and a half weeks. It was unclear why the Department did not challenge ICF further as to why it felt it could deliver substantially faster than the other bidders. The Department recognised it should have had a better technical understanding of ICF’s proposed digital solution, which could have prevented some of the issues experienced subsequently. This was despite a specialist Cabinet Office review of the low-cost bid recommending the Department obtain a more detailed understanding of the proposed solution, which the Department did not do. 8 Green Homes Grant Voucher Scheme Recommendation: In its Treasury Minute response, the Department should set out how it will improve the technical scrutiny of bids during its procurements, to better assure the capability of suppliers and the practical feasibility of their proposals, particularly where a bidder is promising considerably more than others.