Capita Group

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Capita is a British company headquartered in London which specialises in business process outsourcing, having clients in central and local government, and in the private sector. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

One of the government facilities run by Capita is the Criminal Records Bureau; in 2002, when mandatory CRB-vetting of all workers with children was brought in, a large number of teachers were temporarily unable to work after Capita's systems had difficulty with the workload and were subsequently overwhelmed, meaning that the start of the academic year was delayed in places. The company cited the reason as a last-minute change in government policy by the then Secretary of State for Education, Estelle Morris. In the light of this and a number of other perceived high-profile failures of the company (particularly in relation to Private Finance Initiative projects), Private Eye has taken to calling the firm "Crapita".

Capita also collects the television licence fee on behalf of the Post Office for the BBC, manages call centres for many government initiatives such as the London congestion charge, and provides IT services, including web hosting and helpdesk support, to many county and city councils, many LEAs, the Driving Standards Agency and the National Rail (NCAA). They are the developers of the SIMS schools information management software that is used in many primary and secondary schools across the country.

The call centre based in Coventry which deals with the London congestion charge was featured in a series on investigative reporting by the BBC.

Capita provide outsourced HR and Recruitment services for the BBC, though heavily criticised for transferring 260 jobs from London to Belfast. The contract came into effect on 1 April 2006.

Despite continual claims of failures, Capita's share price has seen the biggest rise of any UK company in the last 15 years.

On March 23, 2006, Executive Chairman Rod Aldridge OBE resigned in the aftermath of claims that contracts awarded to the Group were influenced by his loan of £1 million to the Labour Party. Aldridge resigned saying that he denied the claims, but to avoid any lingering doubts about it, he was leaving the company. He will step down in September 2006. Aldridge is a life-long Labour supporter, and had overseen the company's growth from a £100 million company in 1997 (when Labour came to power) to a £4 billion FTSE-100 member in 2006 [1]. Several MPs and journalists questioned Capita's relationship with the Labour party, alleging a special relationship that their performance did not justify.

[edit] History and growth

Capita was formed in 1984 as a division of CIPFA (Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy), became an independent company with 33 staff as a result of a management buy-out three years later, and proceeded to return record results for 15 consecutive years. Having gained full listing on the London Stock Exchange in 1991, Capita is now a FTSE 100 company.

Year	Sites	People	Turnover (£ million)	Pre-tax profit (£ million)
1984	1	2
1987	1	33
1991	11	320	25
1992	15	687	33
1996	60	3,500	112	12.3
1998	80	5,000	238	27.1
1999	100	7,000	327	36.3
2000	120	8,500	453	51.2
2001	140	13,000	691	72.1
2002	200	17,000	898	98.2
2003	210	19,000	1,081	121.2
2004	230	23,000	1,285	148.2