Award

Back Office Application Support and Modernisation

POST OFFICE LIMITED

This public procurement record has 2 releases in its history.

Award

18 Feb 2026 at 09:21

UK6 - Contract Award Notice
Award

17 Feb 2026 at 09:57

UK5 - Transparency Notice
Summary of the contracting process

The procurement process for the "Back Office Application Support and Modernisation" was undertaken by Post Office Limited, located in London. This procurement falls under the IT services industry category and involves the provision of services such as consulting, software development, internet, and support. The process commenced with a direct award, which is now in the award stage as of 18th February 2026, with Accenture (UK) Limited identified as the supplier. The contracting covers the period from 1st April 2026 to 30th June 2029 and includes preparing for service transformation and supporting ongoing Post Office operations. The standstill period ends on 27th February 2026, and the contract signature is scheduled by 20th March 2026.

This tender offers significant opportunities for businesses specialising in IT services, particularly those with expertise in application modernisation, cloud-hosted solutions, and business process automation. Although the contract has been directly awarded to Accenture due to their unique capability to deliver the services required, the nature of the project entails future opportunities for companies with complementary skills to collaborate or support Accenture in technology evolution and continuous improvement initiatives. Large-scale service providers with a strong track record in managing complex IT environments would be well-suited to engage in prospective competitive procurements anticipated for future transformation activities.

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Notice Information

Notice Title

Back Office Application Support and Modernisation

Notice Description

The Back Office IT services contract covers the end-to-end hosting, operation and maintenance of Post Office Limited (POL) core applications and platforms (excluding the Horizon System and Services). This includes business-critical systems supporting finance and ERP, human resources, master and reference data, management information and reporting, integration services, and process automation. These workloads are primarily delivered from the cloud and include a mix of applications, data, integration, and platform services that collectively underpin POL's day-to-day operations. The service encompasses responsibility for the secure, resilient, and performant operation of the estate throughout the contract term. This includes the ongoing support of live production services, maintenance of legacy systems where required, operational monitoring, incident resolution, change and release activity, and business continuity arrangements. The service is designed to allow the Post Office to consume these capabilities as a managed outcome, without the need to directly operate or support the underlying applications or infrastructure. Alongside steady-state operations, the service includes working in partnership with Post Office to support continuous improvement and technology evolution. This includes platform optimisation, automation, and prepare and conduct application modernisation, migration or decommissioning as POL's business and technology landscape evolves, while ensuring services remain secure, compliant, and fit for purpose.

Procurement Information

Post Office Ltd intends to directly award this contract under Section 41 of the Procurement Act 2023, relying on Schedule 5 (Direct award justifications) paragraphs 5 and 6 "Single suppliers" grounds because: 1. only Accenture holds the necessary intellectual property rights for certain proprietary tooling, security operations and bespoke services support wrap that are essential to the safe operation of the current Services . Only Accenture can provide these elements of the Services during the term of the directly awarded contract; and 2. Accenture is the only supplier capable of delivering the Services during the period of the directly awarded contract. No other supplier has the requisite know-how and technical understanding of the bespoke system to support the existing Services during the term of the directly awarded contract. The tooling and support services are deeply embedded into the current operational model, including monitoring, alerting, automation, patching workflows, incident response etc. These services are tools not currently documented, modularised or abstracted in a way that would allow straightforward transfer to an alternative supplier. Transitioning away from these services and tools would require parallel design, implementation, validation and handover activity, which is non-trivial and could not be safely achieved during the term of the directly awarded contract. Only Accenture could do this work while safely continuing to provide the Services to enable another supplier to take over the system. The direct award is both necessary and proportionate, and limited to the period required for Post Office Ltd to prepare and conduct a competitive procurement for future service transformation. POL requires a supplier to provide the Services while conducting preparatory transformation design work. The Services include a complex mix of infrastructure as a service and platform as a service, components, integrations with Horizon (Post Office's electronic point of sale (EPOS) system) and numerous third party and internal systems, and tightly coupled identity, networking, security, logging, and monitoring dependencies embedded within Accenture's proprietary service wrap. There are no reasonable alternatives to the Services because no alternative provider could technically assume responsibility for the service wrap at this time without substantial redevelopment and high-risk of operational disruption. Initiating a change of provider during a period of significant business and operational change would therefore pose a substantive risk to service continuity and the stable delivery of core functions. The Services are critical to the ongoing operation of POL's business. POL cannot accept any gap in the continuity of the Services. Since only Accenture is capable of providing the Services during the period of the directly awarded contract, there is no reasonable alternative to the direct award.

Notice Details

Publication & Lifecycle

Open Contracting ID
ocds-h6vhtk-0655a0
Publication Source
Find A Tender Service
Latest Notice
https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/014581-2026
Current Stage
Award
All Stages
Award

Procurement Classification

Notice Type
UK6 - Contract Award Notice
Procurement Type
Standard
Procurement Category
Services
Procurement Method
Direct
Procurement Method Details
Direct award
Tender Suitability
Not specified
Awardee Scale
Large

Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV)

CPV Divisions

72 - IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support

CPV Codes

72000000 - IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support

Notice Value(s)

Tender Value
Not specified
Lots Value
Not specified
Awards Value
£45,000,000 £10M-£100M
Contracts Value
Not specified

Notice Dates

Publication Date
18 Feb 20264 days ago
Submission Deadline
Not specified
Future Notice Date
Not specified
Award Date
17 Feb 20265 days ago
Contract Period
31 Mar 2026 - 30 Jun 2029 3-4 years
Recurrence
Not specified

Notice Status

Tender Status
Complete
Lots Status
Complete
Awards Status
Pending
Contracts Status
Not Specified

Buyer & Supplier

Contracting Authority (Buyer)

Main Buyer
POST OFFICE LIMITED
Contact Name
Not specified
Contact Email
procurement@postoffice.co.uk
Contact Phone
Not specified

Buyer Location

Locality
LONDON
Postcode
EC2V 7ER
Post Town
Central London
Country
England
Major Region (ITL 1)
TLI London
Basic Region (ITL 2)
TLI3 Inner London - West
Small Region (ITL 3)
TLI35 Westminster and City of London
Delivery Location
Not specified
Local Authority
City of London
Electoral Ward
Bassishaw
Westminster Constituency
Cities of London and Westminster

Supplier Information

Number of Suppliers
1
Supplier Name

ACCENTURE (UK

Further Information

Notice Documents

Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS)

View full OCDS Record for this contracting process

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The Open Contracting Data Standard (OCDS) is a framework designed to increase transparency and access to public procurement data in the public sector. It is widely used by governments and organisations worldwide to report on procurement processes and contracts. 

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