ICB sued over ‘conflict’ in £40m contract award

Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board is defending a claim brought in the High Court by OneMedicare, the incumbent provider of an urgent care centre in Corby. The company claims the commissioner broke procurement regulations when it awarded a contract to run the UCC from April 2024 to 2029 to another bidder, DHU Healthcare.

OneMedicare is a private primary care service provider to the NHS, including GP practices and urgent care centres. It has claimed in court papers filed in February that staff at the ICB involved in evaluating its bid may have had conflicts of interest.

They were conflicted because they had “a personal or professional interest in confirming the outcome” of a previous tender process in 2022 run by the ICB to secure a new provider for the UCC.

The ICB abandoned that first procurement in February 2023, after receiving a challenge from OneMedicare, because it decided “it would not be in the public interest, or in the interests of the local health economy, to spend large amounts of public money by engaging in litigation with all the uncertainty and legal risk that this entails”, according to a statement made at the time.

The company has said the staff members involved in evaluating the second procurement for the UCC were likely involved in evaluating the first procurement, too.

It singles out three employees of the ICB who it said “had specific personal or professional interests in confirming the outcome of the first tender process”. It goes on to say that relations between OneMedicare and one of the employees had “deteriorated” following the first tender process and legal challenge.

Relations between the company and another of the three were described as “difficult” and they had been the subject of an “informal complaint”. Relations with the third staff member “remain cordial”.

The claim also said the ICB had made manifest errors in its scoring of the competing bids – errors that meant OneMedicare came fourth rather than first, and that it had failed in its obligation of transparency.

The ICB said in its defence, lodged with the court in March, that the first procurement was “materially similar but not the same as the contract that is the subject of these proceedings”. It went on to deny “that the prior procurement is the procurement that is the subject to these proceedings”.

It rejects the claims that its staff were conflicted, outlining the processes it has in place to guard against any potential conflict.

It said 12 out of 15 people who evaluated the bids for the Corby UCC contract in the second procurement had been involved in the first procurement but said they had all declared there was no conflict before beginning on the second procurement evaluation.

The ICB went on to deny “that their mere involvement in the prior procurement… or alleged awareness of the outcome… is sufficient to give rise to a personal or professional interest in confirming the outcomes of the prior procurement”.

It also denied relations had broken down between two specific employees and the company. It denied the claim that it had made errors in scoring the competing bids or that it had failed in its duty to transparency.

OneMedicare declined to comment while a spokesperson for Northamptonshire ICB said: “Corby Urgent Care Centre remains open as normal and there are no changes to the service it provides to the local population of Corby and Northamptonshire. With live legal proceedings underway, it would not be appropriate for us to comment at this time.”