Serco

 ( Www.serco.com Official Website ) 

Serco provides support services to garrisons in Australia. Serco manages many aspects of operations at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom in Shrivenham. Prior to June 2021, Serco was one of three partners in the consortium who managed the Atomic Weapons Establishment until it was taken over by the MoD: in July 2015, the Office for Nuclear Regulation issued an improvement notice to the consortium demanding that it demonstrate that it has a long-term strategy for managing Higher Active radioactive Waste in order to reduce the risk to the public and its employees.

Serco is a major subcontractor to Airbus Defence and Space on the Skynet military communications satellites under a private finance initiative (PFI) contract.

Serco Marine Services is responsible for fleet support at the three main UK naval bases, HMNB Portsmouth, HMNB Devonport and HMNB Clyde. In November 2022, the MoD awarded Serco a £200million follow-on contract, lasting 27months, to provide marine services for the Royal Navy.

Serco has operated a number of train operating companies. It has a 50% shareholding in Serco-Abellio that has a concession to operate the Merseyrail franchise in Liverpool until 2028, and previously operated the Northern Rail franchise from December 2004 until March 2016. Between April 2015 and June 2023, Serco operated the Caledonian Sleeper between London and Scotland; the contract was terminated early after Serco's request to rebase the loss making contract was deemed by Transport Scotland to not offer value.

In 1997, Serco purchased the Railtest business as part of the privatisation of British Rail. Included in the sale was a management contract for the Old Dalby Test Track. Between 1997 and 2004, Serco operated the National Rail Enquiry Service under contract to the Association of Train Operating Companies. It maintains Network Rail's fleet of infrastructure and maintenance trains at the Railway Technical Centre.

In Scotland, Serco has operated the NorthLink Ferries ferry service since July 2012. In September 2018, the firm commenced operating a bicycle-sharing system under contract to Transport for Edinburgh; these scheme was closed during September 2021.

Serco's Home Affairs division operates speed camera systems throughout the UK and, until November 2013, designed, wrote and tested the software that controls the matrix message signs, signals, emergency roadside telephones (SOS) and traffic monitoring on England's motorway network including, until 2011, the National Traffic Control Centre.

Starting in 1997, Serco operated the London's Docklands Light Railway (DLR) under franchise. In November 2005, TfL announced that Serco had retained the DLR franchise for seven years from May 2006; this contract was extended until September 2014 in January 2013. However, in July 2014, the DLR franchise was awarded to KeolisAmey Docklands Limited, thus Serco handed over operations on 7 December 2014.

Serco operated Scatsta Airport in Shetland until its closure in 2020. During June 2010, Serco signed a £4million contract to operate all air traffic control services for Coventry Airport.

Serco runs four prisons, a Young Offenders Institution and a Secure Training Centre. It has operated two Immigration Removal Centres since 2007. Serco is responsible for the contracted-out court escort services in the south-east area, formerly a role undertaken by HM Prison Service.

In September 2013, Serco was accused of an extensive cover-up over sexual abuse at Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire, England. During August 2014, it was criticised for using immigrant detainees as cheap labour, with some being paid as little as £1 per hour. The decision to award Serco a new £70million eight-year contract to run Yarl's Wood has been criticised; Natasha Walter, of Women for Refugee Women, said "Serco is clearly unfit to manage a centre where vulnerable women are held and it is unacceptable the government continues to entrust Serco with the safety of women who are survivors of sexual violence."

During 2019, a fine of £19.2million was imposed on Serco following delayed legal action started in 2013 for fraud and false accounting over its electronic tagging service for the Ministry of Justice. Serco was also ordered to pay the full amount of the Serious Fraud Office's investigative costs of £3.7million. In his judgment, Mr Justice Davis said: "SGL (Serco Geografix Ltd) engaged in quite deliberate fraud against the Ministry of Justice in relation to the provision of services vital to the criminal justice system." During April 2021, the charged ex-directors of firm's subsidiary were cleared of fraud and false accounting, primarily due to the SFO having failed to disclose certain documents to the defense, resulting in issues that, according to the judge, "undermine the process of disclosure to the extent that the trial cannot safely and fairly proceed until they have been remedied".

In July 2022, the company supplied food containing to children in a hotel in the Midlands. Serco issued an apology and said it would visit the hotel.

In October 2024, Serco’s tracking devices and panic alarms on prison vans were disabled after a cyber attack. Allegedly, some Serco crews were unaware that vehicles were still being used to transport prisoners for three days after the attack despite continuing software faults.

In December 2024, Serco was accused of failing to tag 77year old climate protestor Gaie Delap after her release on licence from HMP Peterborough, resulting in her being recalled to custody. Her supporters argued that Serco had failed to supply a tag small enough for her averagesized wrist since she could not be tagged on her ankle for medical reasons. They also accused Serco of misrepresenting the reason for its failure to tag Delap, after falsely claiming she had refused to cooperate with its fitting.

In January2025, Delap discovered that she would have to serve a further 20days in prison, the amount of time Serco had previously spent unsuccessfully trying to find a suitable bracelet.

Archived at Ghostarchive and the target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Wayback Machine:

In January 2019, it was reported that Serco had lost the contract to provide housing to asylum seekers in Glasgow. That same year, a Freedom of Information request by the Scottish Refugee Council showed that Serco had been charged nearly £3million by the Home Office for repeatedly breaching its contract to house asylum seekers in Glasgow and Northern Ireland.

The company held the contract for out-of-hours GP services in Cornwall from which it withdrew in December 2013 after the company left the county short of doctors. Serco also stated that it would stop running Braintree hospital in Essex as it opted to pull out of managing GP services and large hospitals.

In health services, Serco's failures include the poor handling of pathology labs and fatal errors in patient records. At St Thomas' Hospital, the increase in the number of clinical incidents arising from Serco non-clinical management has resulted in patients receiving incorrect and infected blood, as well as patients suffering kidney damage due to Serco providing incorrect data used for medical calculations. A Serco employee later revealed that the company had falsified 252 reports to the National Health Service regarding Serco health services in Cornwall.

During November 2013, it emerged that Serco, which been awarded a contract for Suffolk Community Healthcare in 2012, had 72 job vacancies after previously cutting 137 positions. Problems identified by Ipswich and East Suffolk Clinical Commissioning Group include "staff capacity, skill mix, workload, succession planning and morale, training, communication, mobile working, care co-ordination centre processes, incidents and near miss incidents".

In April 2014, Serco revealed that it would lose almost £18million on three of its NHS contracts. It had made provisions for losses in its Braintree and Cornwall contracts, which were cancelled early, and had also made provisions for losses in its contract for services in Suffolk. Serco claimed it would take longer to deliver the operational efficiencies it hoped for, despite stating in May 2013 that it expected to make a profit on the three-year, £140million contract for community services. It said that staff had not recorded activity accurately on the Electronic health record and that activity had increased significantly during the course of the contract.

In August 2014, the company had reportedly decided to withdraw from the clinical health services market in the UK after a review of the cost of delivering "improved service levels" and meeting the performance requirements of several existing contracts.

During October 2017, it was reported that Serco was preparing to buy healthcare contracts from facilities management business Carillion. This deal included 15 contracts, with annual revenues of approximately £90million, for which Serco would pay £47.7million, with Carillion losing £1billion from the value of its order book.

In May 2020, Serco accidentally shared the personal email addresses of nearly 300 trainee COVID-19 contact tracing.

Additionally, Serco performs classification for all incoming US patents, via its contract with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Serco has a contract with the Chicago, Illinois, to enforce parking meter regulations.

Serco provides air traffic control services at many airports in the United States and Canada. Between 2004 and 2005, Serco operated a £5million per year contract from the US government to manage multiple airports in Iraq.

In 2022, Serco was selected by the United States's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop the first generation NOMARS.

In March 2012, Serco was awarded a contract to build and operate a 960-bed prison at Wiri. During March 2022, Te Ao Māori News reported that prisoners at Auckland South Corrections Facility in Wiri were experiencing unliveable conditions, including the denial of prison visits, unjustified lockdowns, lack of access to medical care, and insufficient safeguards against COVID-19; Te Ao reported that these conditions had led to two suicides within the space of five months. In response, Serco disputed several incidents in Te Ao's report and defended the quality of its care and services provided to prisoners. That same month, Radio New Zealand reported that Serco was using to produce psychological reports on Wiri prisoners for the Parole Board.

Between 1997 and 2015, Serco owned the train operator Journey Beyond, which operated The Ghan, Indian Pacific and The Overland passenger trains. In March 2015, the business was sold to Allegro Funds.

In Sydney, Serco has operated transport information services for Transport for NSW since July 2010.

Between 1990 and 2012, the company ran the Borallon Correctional Centre in Queensland, and also operated Wandoo Reintegration Facility in Western Australia between 2012 and 2018.

Starting in July 2009, Serco has held the national contract for various immigration detention centres, including Christmas Island and the Villawood detention centre in Sydney. The Union of Christmas Island Workers highlighted the systemic failure by Serco to manage the Christmas Island Immigration Reception and Processing Centre, where a large number of refugees, including 1,000 children, were detained at its peak around 2013. Under Serco, there was an increase of deaths in custody and self-harm in the years leading up to 2013, as well as a deterioration of facilities, leading to the decline of the physical and the mental health of detainees and of staff. Ombudsman Allan Asher stated "In the first week of June when I visited Christmas Island, more than 30 incidents of self-harm by detainees held there were reported". Serco, in a staged memo leaked to The Australian, blamed the detainees for "creating a culture of self-harm" as a "bargaining tool". The former manager of the detention centre stated the centre was grossly understaffed.

Since 2010, Serco has operated Germany's first partly privatised prison at Hünfeld, Hesse.

During 2013, Serco and its Sweden joint venture partner Strömma Tourism & Maritime secured an eight-year contract to operate four Djurgården ferries on behalf of Stockholm County Council and public ferry company Waxholms Ångfartygs.

Serco manages the United Nations' Earth observation space programme, the Copernicus Programme.