Britain investigates Capita complaints

The British government is investigating complaints that outsourcing firm Capita overcharged and made late payments to partners in a £250m (€335m) government contract to provide training services.

Capita, which runs a range of contracts from back-office IT to pension schemes, had its contract extended two years ago to manage the provision of training across Britain’s Civil Service, which included delivering half of the training as well as managing smaller enterprises to provide the rest.

However, a group of 12 companies involved in the scheme has formed a consortium claiming that Capita routinely paid its invoices late, took excessive fees for administering contracts and that it included “non-compete clauses” in its agreements which prevented them from doing further work for the government without Capita’s permission.