Service Birmingham offshores IT jobs

Joint venture firm moves back-office positions to India

Service Birmingham, the joint venture with Capita that provides services for the UK's largest council, has confirmed that it plans to outsource a number of IT functions to India.

A spokesman said the decision has already been made as part of its contract extension with the council, and will cover only people working on back-office services.

"It won't have any effect on customer-facing roles," he said.

The plan is for 55 jobs to have been outsourced by the end of the summer, with up to another 45 by the end of the year, although the organisation "will have to look at how the initial deployment goes".

The spokesman said the measure is being taken to provide savings, although there is no firm estimate on how much money it will save.

"As part of our on-going partnership with Birmingham city council we are exploring how we can utilise some overseas expertise to help deliver a cost-effective addition to our existing Birmingham operation," he said.

"As the city council's partner, we are committed to operating as efficiently as possible. We therefore need to offer the council the best combination of operating models to deliver cost savings and efficiency gains while maintaining our existing service levels."

He added that the organisation is working with trade unions on the issue.

This article was originally published at Guardian Government Computing.

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