Award of Payroll Services Contract for St Thomas Catholic Academies Trust

St Thomas Catholic Academies Trust is undertaking this procurement process to source a suitable provider that can operate all aspects of the Trust's payroll and pension administration for all their schools and any schools that may join the Trust in the future. Over the past few years the Trust has changed significantly by growing to 17 schools and as such the requirements of the payroll and personnel 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. STCAT schools are based within varying areas 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. 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. The number of schools is due to increase shortly from 17 to 20, plus the Central Team, and the Trust requires a system to manage that change.