A large UK council had a highly fragmented catering and events operation across parks, civic venues, and museums. Delivery was split between in-house teams and multiple external suppliers, many operating under outdated or non-compliant arrangements. This created operational inefficiency, commercial leakage, and increasing legal and compliance risk.
Senior leadership and political sponsors mandated a shift to a single corporate landlord model, aligned to wider property rationalisation and income-generation strategy.

I was asked to complete the procurement under Competitive Dialogue, finalise and sign the contract, and lead the end-to-end transition and mobilisation of a single strategic provider — while managing TUPE, demobilising incumbents, protecting council interests, and keeping live services running across 15 sites.

I treated the mobilisation as a full transformation programme, not a contract swap. I established new contract management and service-delivery capabilities, introduced cost centres aligned to business areas, and embedded financial and performance reporting into the council’s corporate governance framework.

I led complex TUPE negotiations, including a critical situation where an incumbent supplier refused to identify transferring staff, creating legal and commercial risk for the incoming provider. I coordinated HR, Legal, procurement, and both suppliers, enforced contractual obligations, and resolved the impasse through a council-backed indemnity — protecting compliance, mobilisation timelines, and service continuity.

When the incoming provider attempted to renegotiate commercial terms late in the process, I reinforced the agreed contractual framework and ensured delivery remained aligned to the approved scope, timetable, and governance decisions.

I also navigated late-stage policy and scope challenges — including changes in executive priorities around civic space usage and unplanned cost pressures raised by internal services — brokering pragmatic, legally sound solutions that balanced public duty, commercial viability, and operational reality.

As part of mobilisation, I coordinated the incoming provider’s operational IT enablement by working with the council’s IT and security teams. This included enabling access to approved external internet services, overseeing the transition of existing third-party operational systems such as ePOS arrangements, and facilitating controlled access to council venue and room-booking platforms required for day-to-day service delivery. All access was aligned to council security, governance, and data-protection standards to ensure day-one readiness.

Alongside this, I coordinated operational readiness across IT systems, cash handling, stock, security, legal handover, and site mobilisation to ensure a controlled transition with no service interruption.

The contract was successfully agreed and signed, legacy suppliers exited cleanly, and staff transferred compliantly. A single operating model was implemented across all venues, reducing compliance risk, improving commercial control, and enabling future income generation — all delivered without disruption to live services and fully aligned to the council’s corporate landlord strategy.

• Business transformation
• Procurement
• organisational transformation
• governance
• TOM (Target Operating Model)
• public sector
• Stakeholder Engagement
• stakeholder management
• Conflict Resolution for conflicted Senior Teams
• Strategy Execution
• Financial Management
• Problem Solving
• compliance
• business and it operational processes

• Government and Public Services