Contract intelligence for reorganising councils
Exclusive UK distributor for Genius Bytes.
Local Government Reorganisation: the detail
The merger itself happens once. Its consequences run on for years.
While attention is on shadow elections and the go-live date, day-to-day work changes long before that. Several predecessor authorities keep operating in parallel, with different systems, different responsibilities and no extra resource for the transition itself.
Day-to-day work continues throughout the transition.
Multiple systems at once:
Legacy filing structures, mailboxes and network drives continue side by side.
Unclear ownership:
Tasks are duplicated or left undone while responsibilities change.
Knowledge leaves:
Experienced colleagues move on before process knowledge is recorded.
Resident queries continue:
FOI requests, complaints and legal disputes still need timely answers.
Time pressure:
The transition runs alongside business as usual, without additional resources.
Contracts and agreements: the blind spot
Contracts sit across cabinets, drives, inboxes and business systems. Similar services can be purchased twice; renewal and termination dates pass unnoticed; responsibility for an inherited agreement can remain unresolved after the merger. Section 24 directions add a consent question for certain commitments during the shadow year.
Five questions for every team
Could we name every contract expiring in the next 90 days, today?
Could we prove to an audit that no service is being paid for twice?
How long would it take to find a specific legacy contract from a predecessor authority?
Do contracts transfer automatically to the new unitary authority?
Which procurement regime applies to an inherited contract?
One contract register for the whole merger
Bring the predecessor authorities' agreements into one searchable, auditable register. Monitor renewal and termination dates, identify duplicated services and retain the source clause behind each finding. Change-of-control, assignment and novation clauses stay visible for the responsible teams to review.
From the contract estate to the whole council
Documentation / Zeendoc:
Searchable records, archiving and document workflows.
Compliance / Genius Kappa and Zeendoc:
Digital identities, access controls and document evidence.
Print infrastructure / Genius Suite:
A shared, controlled environment across predecessor fleets.
The detailed review / From the supplied campaign briefing
Genius Intelligence examines the estate in its existing formats: PDFs, scans, signed originals and attachments. The following campaign detail describes the extraction, statutory questions and fifty-contract offer.
The review, in four steps
You send the contracts.
Up to fifty, from any predecessor council, redacted or sample material is fine. Whatever format they're already in, with no pre-sorting needed.
A 30-minute scoping call.
We agree what “at risk” means for your contract baseline: renewal exposure, split-authority terms, whatever matters to you.
The estate gets read.
Genius Intelligence extracts parties, dates, obligations and clauses; every finding is tagged to its source clause.
Contract due diligence, in writing.
A register-ready read-out, including anything we couldn't resolve. Nothing further happens unless you choose to continue.
What it extracts / Six fields per contract: the basis of a contracts register that holds up.
Not a summary paragraph but a structured read-out, so the same questions can be asked across every predecessor council's contracts at once rather than one agreement at a time. It is the contract baseline work the LGA and Local Digital guidance both ask for, done by reading the agreements rather than by circulating a spreadsheet.
Parties and reference:
Both signatories, the contract's own reference number, and which predecessor council holds it. The column a unified contracts register is built on.
Regime and award date:
Whether it sits under PCR 2015 or the Procurement Act 2023, and the date that decides it.
Key dates:
Renewal window, notice period and termination date, surfaced months ahead rather than discovered on the day.
Change-triggered clauses:
Change of control, assignment and novation terms: the ones that specifically bite on a transfer to a successor authority.
Obligations and KPIs:
What each party actually committed to, mapped against the Act's performance duty where it applies.
Pricing mechanics:
Indexation basis and rate, so an inherited price can be checked rather than assumed correct.
Illustrative output
Not real client data
| Ref | Counterparty | Regime | Flagged | Clause |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CT-2019-0447 | Grounds & facilities contractor | PCR 2015 | Renewal in 62 days | 14.2: auto-renews unless 90 days' notice given |
| CT-2023-0118 | Software licensing agreement | Procurement Act 2023 | Change-of-control clause | 9.4: counterparty may terminate on reorganisation |
| CT-2021-0290 | Waste collection services | PCR 2015 | Indexation due | 6.1: RPI uplift each April, last applied 2024 |
The regulatory basis / The five instruments behind LGR contract transfer, and what each requires.
This is the detail our flyer summarised in one line each. It's what a contracts register needs to hold to answer a Monitoring Officer's question, not a Chief Executive's.
Procurement Act 2023 / ss. 69–71, 74, 75, 77, 80
Sections 69–71 govern how a live contract can be modified without a new competition. Section 74 sets a termination notice window of 30 days. Section 75 introduces an annual KPI reporting duty for contracts above £5m. Sections 77 and 80 carry the publication obligations forward. None of this reaches a contract awarded before 24 February 2025 unless it's later modified, which is what pulls an old contract into the new regime.
Local Government Transparency Code 2015 / Two publication thresholds
Spend over £500 is published as a matter of routine transparency. Contracts over £5,000 carry a heavier duty: start date, end date and next review date, published quarterly. A register that can't produce both thresholds automatically means someone doing it by hand, every quarter, forever.
Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 / ss. 7, 14, 16–17
This is the Act a Structural Changes Order is actually made under. Section 7 gives the power to create the Order; section 14 is the property and rights transfer scheme; sections 16–17 cover what happens where an area is only partly affected. It's the legal root of “the contract transfers”: not a policy choice, a statutory one.
Section 24 directions / LGPIHA 2007, s. 24, the shadow-year control
The constraint that bites before vesting day rather than after it. A section 24 direction makes a predecessor council seek the shadow authority's consent before it commits. In the direction issued to the Surrey councils on 8 July 2026, that meant land disposals above £100,000, capital contracts above £1m, and non-capital contracts above £100,000 running beyond 1 April 2027. Thresholds are set per direction, so read your own. Either way you cannot apply it to an estate you have not yet read: knowing which contracts fall inside it is the work.
SI 2008/2176 / Regs 8–13, the transfer regulations
The regulations made under that Act. Regs 8–13 set out how property, rights and liabilities move to a successor council, and, in the case that matters most here, how a contract is allocated whole when a district is divided between two successors, with a caretaker arrangement for anything unresolved at vesting day.
Why this ends up in an audit finding, not just a filing problem
The National Audit Office has reported for a decade that government underinvests in contract management relative to procurement. Grant Thornton's review of 53 auditors' annual reports found non-compliance risk concentrated there specifically because it's devolved to service lines rather than held centrally. All three value-for-money criteria in the 2024 Code of Audit Practice reach a contract register, so a gap in one is a gap in the audit, not just a gap in a spreadsheet.
The product / Genius Intelligence: contract intelligence for an inherited estate.
One working summary, every finding traced to its clause
It reads a contract estate and returns the six fields above as one structured record per contract, built from the agreements as they actually exist: PDFs, scans, signed originals and their attachments, in whatever format each predecessor council happens to hold them. It does not require the estate to be re-filed or standardised first, which is what separates it from a contract management system you would have to populate by hand.
Deadline detection:
Every renewal, notice and termination date surfaced months ahead, not the week it becomes urgent.
Clause-level risk analysis:
Change of control, assignment, novation, indexation and liability terms, flagged with the clause number attached.
Obligation and KPI extraction:
What was actually promised, mapped to the Act's performance duty where the threshold applies.
Recalculation and recovery:
Indexation and overcharge errors shown with the working, so an amount can be recovered rather than accepted.
Answers across the estate:
One question, answered against every legacy contract and attachment at once, with the source clause on screen.
Not a procurement platform, not a substitute for legal judgement, and not an archive digitisation programme. It reads and evidences what you already hold; your own lawyers make the calls it surfaces.
Fits what you already run:
Sits alongside your document, ERP and email systems, with nothing to migrate before it can start reading.
Data handling / Where the data actually sits, precisely.
– Built and hosted in the EU: Genius Bytes' own infrastructure, Bochum, Germany, not a US-owned platform with a European front end.
Outside US CLOUD Act jurisdiction
Genius Bytes is contractually outside US CLOUD Act jurisdiction. Your contracts are hosted only in Germany, on Genius Bytes’ own infrastructure in Bochum, and stay on EU infrastructure.
Your duties stay yours:
Hosting in Germany does not remove your DPIA, retention schedule or record of processing. Those are still the council’s to hold.
Scoped to what you send:
For the free review, processing is limited to the specific contracts you supply. Redacted or sample material is accepted precisely so you control what's shared.
Before you ask / The questions we get on the scoping call.
What format do the fifty contracts need to be in?
Whatever you already have. PDFs, scans, signed originals with their attachments. Nothing needs sorting or converting first.
What happens to our documents after the review?
You get the findings in writing, including anything the read-out couldn't resolve. Nothing continues past that unless you decide it should.
Who actually checks the findings?
Your own legal and procurement teams. Every finding traces back to the clause it came from specifically so you can verify it rather than take it on trust.
Does this replace our legal advice?
No. It surfaces what's in the estate; your lawyers still decide what it means and what to do about it.
How much of our time does the free review take?
Thirty minutes to scope it on a call. The reading happens on our side.
Do contracts transfer automatically to the new unitary authority?
Yes. The Structural Changes Order transfers them by operation of law, whether or not anyone has read them, which is why due diligence before vesting day is about knowing what you have rather than deciding whether to take it on.
How does a section 24 direction affect contract decisions in the shadow year?
It makes commitments above the thresholds in your own direction subject to the shadow authority's consent. Answering a consent question needs the contract's value, term and extension mechanics to hand, which is exactly what the read-out gives you.
How is a contract split when a district is divided between two unitaries?
It isn't split. Regs 8 to 13 of SI 2008/2176 allocate each agreement whole, by agreement between the successors, with a caretaker arrangement for anything unresolved at vesting day.
Can you do this for every council in our area at once?
Yes. Where it helps, we'll read every predecessor council's contract estate in a reorganising area to the same standard, in one pass, so the contracts register is built once.
From the contract baseline to the wider council
Together with Genius Bytes, Folio1 can build one shared foundation for the wider council: Zeendoc for documentation, Genius Kappa and Zeendoc for compliance, and Genius Suite for print infrastructure. That means no second migration and no separate project for each area.
The offer, precisely / Fifty inherited contracts, read at no charge.
Fifty contracts, a thirty-minute scoping call, findings in writing. Redacted or sample material is fine. You get the findings back either way, including anything we can't solve, and nothing continues past that point unless you want it to.
Route to buy: We approach authorities directly to understand requirements at first hand. Delivery is via XMA, or your preferred framework partner where that partner is willing to work with us.
Nigel Eaton
Managing Director
Folio1 Solutions Limited.
n.eaton@folio1.solutions
01628 902597.