Bromcom have announced that they are launching a multi-million pound legal action against rivals Arbor, claiming that Arbor won 26 contracts across over 500 schools unfairly.
Schools Week posted an article explaining the background to this legal argument – you can find the full article here.
Two years ago, Bromcom took action against United Learning Trust over a £2 million MIS contract which they awarded to Arbor. Bromcom won that high court case, after a judge ruled that they should have won the contract. Now they are claiming that Arbor have unfairly won many other contracts by making ‘material misrepresentations’ over its finances that would otherwise have caused it to have been ‘automatically disqualified’ during the procurement processes.
Ali Guryel, Bromcom’s Managing Director, provided us with the following statement on this:
Bromcom confirms its legal action against Arbor for damages arising from Arbor’s conduct in the 2019-20 procurement exercise carried out by United Learning Trust (ULT).
Bromcom maintains that Arbor knowingly or recklessly misrepresented its financial position to ULT during the procurement process which was a key factor in ULT’s decision to award the contract to Arbor.
Bromcom believes that Arbor’s actions not only unfairly disadvantaged Bromcom in the ULT tender process but also undermined the principles of fair competition and transparency in public procurement. Bromcom champions a fair and open market where competition thrives based on merit and adherence to procurement regulations. This legal action seeks to address this and ensure that such practices are not repeated in the future for the good of education market.
Bromcom also had been highlighting that Arbor conduct during the procurement process, with the offering of a discount on a separate contract, was impermissible which was a direct, significant impact on bid evaluation scores and hence a key factor in ULT’s decision to award the contract to Arbor. This conduct was found to be a breach of procurement law by the High Court, and this decision was upheld by the Court of Appeal. As Appeal Judge, Lord Justice Coulson, commented, “A tenderer cannot offer a price advantage in respect of a completely separate contract.”
Furthermore, Bromcom is a strong advocate for open systems. We provide our customers with full access to their SQL data and data backups, and facilitate seamless data migration without hindrance or charge should a customer want to move from Bromcom. We believe schools and trusts should have complete control over their data, and the freedom to choose the solutions that best meet their needs and should not live in fear of being sued when moving software supplier.
Bromcom remains committed to providing high-quality software solutions to schools and trusts and will continue to vigorously pursue its legal rights to protect its interests and those of its customers.
A statement on the Arbor website provides their reaction to this claim:
We are aware that Bromcom has filed a legal claim against Arbor, relating to the MIS tender process run by United Learning back in 2019. In the claim, Bromcom have named United Learning alongside 26 other MATs that they allege they should have subsequently won. We know news like this can sound alarming, so we wanted to publish a short statement in response here to reassure the schools, MATs and LAs we work with.
We strongly deny all of the allegations made by Bromcom, which we believe to be entirely without merit. We are profitable, have a multiple of the capital required to cover the case and look forward to being vindicated in court.
In the meantime, we will continue to focus our time and energy on building market-leading products, supporting the 9,000 schools who have chosen Arbor, and investing in world-class product innovation.
Our thoughts
Legal action concerning education software providers and contracts with schools or MATs is not something any of us like to see. We pride ourselves, in the education space, on being fair, transparent and only wanting the best for our schools, their staff and their pupils at all times.
However, the MIS sector, in particular, has been very turbulent over recent years, with thousands of schools and MATs moving MIS providers. MIS contracts, especially those for Multi Academy Trusts, can be worth large sums of money and it is to be expected that those bidding for such contracts want to see that all bids are treated fairly and consistently in line with the procurement guidelines. Should any such bids not be treated in this way, that can only be a bad thing for the industry as a whole.
