Managed Payroll Services for Multi Academy Trust

Broad Horizons Education Trust is currently exploring options for the future provision of its payroll services commencing in September 2027. The Trust currently has an estimated headcount of 1408 employees across 18 sites/academies, processed on a monthly pay cycle.
The purpose of this Request for Information is to engage with potential suppliers prior to any formal procurement to:
Inform our procurement strategy, scope, and specification.
Gauge market interest, capacity, and capabilities.
Understand standard market pricing models, implementation timelines, and risk mitigation strategies.
The primary objectives of this engagement are to:
Gauge current market interest, capacity, and capabilities across service delivery models
Seek supplier feedback to refine and finalize the procurement strategy, technical specification, and performance KPIs.
Understand commercial and pricing models.
Inform system integration requirements to ensure a successful go-live for September 2027.
Key operational requirements include:
Full and seamless transition
Full management processing of monthly payrolls.
Comprehensive public sector pension scheme administration, returns, and compliance-specifically Teachers' Pensions Scheme (TPS) and Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS)
Pay scales - To be able to cope with Teaching pay scales, support staff pay scale, apprenticeships plus off-scale pay grades where needed
Pay awards and increments To be able to apply pay awards to current staff automatically
For back pay to be automatically calculated
To be able to chose to backdated pay awards to some leavers
To be able to apply increments at different dates for some staff
To be able to apply 'No Increment' for specific contracts
Integration capability with existing HR and Finance systems and simple data input
Integration with MIS - currently Arbor - to provide a 'single source of truth' from which reports and data flows
Access for Employees - To efficiently be able to download payslips, P60s...