Qualco UK secures landmark public sector deal

Qualco UK will be delivering the framework, over a fixed period of 30 months, for the Crown Commercial Service, an agency of the Cabinet Office that procures services from the private sector.

The DMS is a new government initiative that will offer all public sector organisations access to private sector debt management services. It will be open to a very broad range of public sector organisations – local authorities, some central government departments, government agencies, NHS trusts, the police, education institutions and many more.

All these organisations will gain access to Qualco’s third party network and analytics services to recover debt owed to the public sector.

Qualco UK said the DMS will present a varied portfolio of accounts including commercial, tenancy arrears, housing benefit overpayments, sundries, adult social care, council tax arrears and probate.

Services that will be delivered under the framework include debt collection, litigation and enforcement, bespoke debt services and analytics services. This includes data cleansing and enrichment, scoring and segmentation, data insight and bespoke analytics.

Matthew Hooper, senior commercial lead of the Crown Commercial Service (CCS), said: “CCS are pleased to welcome Qualco onto the framework; in the current economic climate it is more important than ever that government and wider public services have access to market-leading debt recovery solutions, that have ethical and fair customer treatments at their core.”

Jan-Michael Lacey, head of sales at Qualco UK, said: “All at Qualco UK are delighted to be joining the DMS framework. Together with our partners, we aim to deliver an exceptional service to the public sector, one which encapsulates a fair and ethical approach, coupled with value for money.”

The DMS is separate from the Debt Market Integrator (DMI), which was also conceived in the Cabinet Office and is now run by Indesser, a joint venture with TDX Group. The DMS will be open to all public sector bodies, agencies and departments that don’t currently use the DMI for debt collection.

Both the DMS and the DMI represent a major shift in the government’s approach to debt collection in recent years. Led by the Cabinet Office, the strategy has been to consolidate fragmented procedures for debt collection across central and local government, and move towards private sector standards.

But MPs have called for these newer standards to be enshrined in new legislation. Last week, a group of more than 50 MPs sent a letter to the chancellor, calling for serious and systematic improvements to government debt collection, that could be brought about with a Debt Management Bill.