Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Cornwall Council intends to award a contract to Esri (UK) Ltd for the provision of its Corporate Geographic Information System (GIS) platform, including software licensing, cloud services, support, maintenance and associated GIS capabilities. Following completion of the procurement process and internal governance approvals, this Contract Award Notice commences the statutory standstill period, which will conclude on 13 August 2026.

Subject to completion of the standstill period and the absence of any successful challenge, Cornwall Council intends to enter into the contract on 14 August 2026. The Corporate GIS platform is a critical enterprise system that underpins the delivery of a wide range of statutory, regulatory and operational services across the Council, including Planning, Building Control, Land Charges, Highways, Elections, Waste Management, Emergency Planning, Property Services, Public Health, Customer Services and public-facing mapping services.

The platform is integrated with numerous corporate systems and partner organisations and plays a fundamental role in delivering the Council's digital transformation strategy, cloud migration programme and planned transition away from on-premise datacentre infrastructure. To inform its procurement strategy, Cornwall Council undertook a comprehensive preliminary market engagement exercise through publication of a Preliminary Market Engagement Notice and accompanying Request for Information (RFI).

Five supplier responses were received, including the incumbent supplier, Esri (UK) Services Ltd. Suppliers were invited to review the Council's detailed requirements and self-assess against mandatory technical, operational, security, integration and support requirements. Analysis of the responses demonstrated that no alternative supplier was capable of meeting all mandatory requirements through a single contractual solution.

Whilst one respondent offered a mature and established GIS platform with notable market presence, it was unable to satisfy a number of mandatory requirements that were considered essential to maintaining existing statutory service provision, integration capabilities, security standards and the Council's future cloud migration objectives. Addressing these gaps would have required additional product development, bespoke configuration, third-party solutions and further implementation activity, creating additional cost, delivery risk and uncertainty around future capability.

Other supplier proposals relied upon combinations of open-source technologies, consultancy services, third-party products or undeveloped solutions that would have introduced significant implementation risk, increased migration costs, technical incompatibilities and operational challenges. Furthermore, irrespective of individual supplier capability, any migration away from the incumbent ESRI platform would require substantial redevelopment of integrations, migration of business-critical datasets, extensive testing, user retraining and a prolonged transition period across a complex GIS estate supporting numerous statutory and operational services.

The Council therefore concluded that alternative supplier solutions would introduce disproportionate technical, operational and commercial risk when compared with a direct award to Esri (UK) Services Ltd and would not represent a reasonable alternative given the Council's requirement to maintain service continuity whilst progressing its strategic migration to a cloud-hosted GIS environment. The Council considered multiple procurement options, including maintaining the existing arrangements, conducting a call-off through existing framework agreements and dynamic purchasing systems, undertaking a competitive procurement exercise and direct award negotiation with the incumbent supplier.

Following consultation with Commercial Services and Legal Services, the Council concluded that a direct award represented the most appropriate procurement route. The Council relied upon Schedule 5, Paragraphs 6 and 7 of the Procurement Act 2023, on the basis that competition was absent for technical reasons, no reasonable alternative solutions existed, and a change of supplier would result in disproportionate technical and operational difficulties arising from the complexity of the Council's existing GIS estate, integrations, operational processes and planned migration to a cloud-hosted architecture.

In accordance with the Procurement Act 2023, Cornwall Council subsequently published a Transparency Notice on 14 October 2025 via the UK Central Digital Platform (Find a Tender Service) under notice reference 2025/S 000-065139, titled "Geographic Information Systems (GIS)". The notice set out the Council's intention to proceed with a direct award to Esri (UK) Services Ltd and detailed the legal and commercial rationale supporting reliance upon Schedule 5, Paragraphs 6 and 7 of the Procurement Act 2023.

The notice explained that no alternative supplier had demonstrated the ability to satisfy the Council's mandatory technical, operational, security and integration requirements through a single contractual solution, and that changing supplier would create disproportionate technical, commercial and operational difficulties. Following publication of the Transparency Notice, no challenge, objection or substantive representation was received from the market.

The notice remains publicly available at: https://www.find-tender.service.gov.uk/Notice/065139-2025. Given the complexity of the Council's GIS estate and the strategic requirement to migrate from an on-premise environment to a cloud-hosted operating model, the Council implemented a six-month extension to the existing contract to allow sufficient time to complete technical discovery activities and commercial negotiations.

During this period, an ArcGIS Well-Architected Solution Design Review was undertaken to assess the Council's current architecture, integrations, licensing model and migration requirements. The review concluded that migration would require a phased transition and a period of coexistence between legacy and cloud services, as a simple lift-and-shift approach was not viable due to the extensive dependencies and integrations across the Council's GIS environment.

The outcomes of the discovery exercise informed detailed commercial negotiations with Esri (UK) Services Ltd. These negotiations resulted in a bespoke phased licensing and migration model specifically designed to support the Council's cloud migration roadmap. The proposed arrangement allows the Council to transition progressively from its existing on-premise ArcGIS environment to ArcGIS Online whilst maintaining continuity of business-critical and statutory services.

The negotiated solution provides licensing flexibility throughout the migration period, reduces the requirement for future contract variations and avoids significant costs that would otherwise arise through platform replacement, service disruption, redevelopment of integrations, retraining of users, migration activities and dual-running of competing GIS environments. The intended contract award comprises a five-year core term commencing on 18 August 2026 and expiring on 17 August 2031, with a total committed contract value of £754,420.51 excluding VAT.

The contract also includes an option to extend for a further five-year period, providing for a potential maximum contract duration of ten years. The inclusion of the extension option forms part of this procurement and award decision and has been disclosed to the market accordingly.

However, the pricing, licensing scope and commercial arrangements applicable to the extension period have not yet been negotiated or approved. Exercise of the extension option will therefore remain subject to future commercial negotiation with Esri (UK) Services Ltd, confirmation of affordability, review of ongoing business requirements and completion of Cornwall Council's internal governance and approval processes.

Based on current assumptions and projected licensing requirements, the total value of the potential ten-year arrangement is anticipated to be in the region of £1.7 million to £1.9 million excluding VAT, although this remains indicative and subject to future negotiation and approval. The Council considers the proposed award to represent the lowest-risk and best-value solution available for maintaining its critical GIS capability, ensuring continuity of service across the organisation, supporting its cloud-first strategy and enabling the successful migration of corporate geospatial services to a modern cloud-hosted platform. Subject to completion of the standstill period ending on 13 August 2026, the Council intends to enter into contract with Esri (UK) Services Ltd from 14 August 2026.