Consultancy firms have been awarded more than £1m in outsourcing work to help the NHS in Scotland recover from the first wave of coronavirus and plan for a second one.

PWC is receiving £250,000 for work to help ‘recover and redesign’ health and social care after the first peak of covid-19 cases.

Meanwhile KPMG has a £100,000 contract to ‘learn lessons’ from the experience of care homes in advance of any second wave that could come in winter, as well as £427,000 for advisory services for social care.

Nearly half of Scotland’s 4,000 virus deaths have happened in residential care settings and watchdogs have said the human rights of residents there could have been breached.

Another £300,000 has gone to major IT firm Capgemini to carry out ‘service recovery modelling’ for the health service.

Three of the four contracts were awarded without any other companies having the opportunity to compete, due to the “extreme urgency” of the pandemic.

The Scottish Government said carrying out a procurement exercise would have “substantially” delayed the work, which was vital to the pandemic response.

Details of the contracts were published online this week and, not including VAT, add up to just under £1.1m.

PWC said it does not comment on client work but a spokesperson for KPMG UK, speaking about the care homes lessons learned project, said: “KPMG has been appointed by the Scottish government to document the measures and actions that were taken, specifically relating to Scottish care homes, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The purpose of this project is to assist the Scottish government to identify any lessons or appropriate future actions that could be taken in the event of a potential second wave of the virus later this year

“Our forensic services team will not be conducting any clinical or medical evaluation, but will review documents, conduct interviews with relevant stakeholders, and provide a report summarising our discussions, to enable the Scottish Government to carry out appropriate evaluations.”

The firm did not provide any more details on its £427,000 social care advisory contract.

Capgemini was approached for comment.

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “The impact of covid-19 on the NHS in Scotland has seen the need for extensive emergency planning and rapid follow up work across our health and social care sector and carrying out a public procurement exercise for these contracts would substantially delay the provision of information which is vitally important to our ongoing response to the pandemic.”

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