Hundreds of back office IT jobs at the Metropolitan Police Service are to be made redundant under a ten-year £216m outsourcing deal with Steria, which will see service delivery moved out of the capital.

The contract was approved this week by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, with the force estimating savings of £100m over the next decade.

From October 2016, the Met's tech services will move over to the Shared Services Connected Limited centre, which is run as a joint venture between Steria and the Cabinet Office.

A spokeswoman at the Met, confirmed the Paris-based outsourcing giant's plans to relocate service delivery to its facilities "outside of the London area".

For the first twelve months SSCL will provide services to MPS from its current London-based locations. At the end of that period it is proposed that services will be transferred to Newport and Newcastle.

A small presence in London will be retained by SSCL to provide essential face to face services, the Met told The Register.

"Staff that transfer to SSCL will be given the opportunity to relocate with SSCL, however, it is anticipated that the majority of staff will not exercise this option and will therefore be made redundant by SSCL. These redundancies are likely to take place in the autumn of 2016," said a spokeswoman.

The move is part of the Met's plan to slash £800m from its annual budget of £3.2bn by 2020.

Last year the Metropolitan Police splashed £302m on IT, down from £312m the previous year. The force currently employs 672 full-time tech staff and contractors. According to responses to our FOI request, the yearly wage bill on IT staff comes in at £40.1m.

A spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office for Policing And Crime, which approved the deal, said in a canned statement:

“The Mayor’s top priority is the safety and security of Londoners, and ensuring the capital remains one of the safest cities in the world to live in and visit.

"As policing budgets across the country continue to be squeezed, it is vital that savings are made in order to protect frontline services."

However, sources have told us that the Cabinet Office and Steria's SCCL joint venture, established in November 2013, has not been going well to date.

The government's Major Project Authority has flagged the project as amber-red - meaning it is failing to deliver on the objectives set. ®