Accenture, the lead contractor in the National Programme for NHS IT (NPfIT), is to hand over the majority of its contracts to CSC from 8 January 2007. 

The company will walk away from nine years of its £1.97bn 10-year contract, and will pay back £63m of the £173m it has already been paid by the NHS. An undisclosed number of Accenture staff will transfer to CSC.

Accenture is transferring responsibility for GP and hospital IT in the North East and East clusters to CSC, but will retain responsibility for delivering the Picture Archiving and Communications System.

CSC has responsibility for the North, North West, Midlands and West clusters.

Accenture has not made public the reason for its departure from NPfIT, but press reports have pointed to the difficulty the firm has had in envisaging a profitable outcome from the contract. 

The transfer from Accenture to CSC may provide come relief for troubled subcontractor iSoft, which was commissioned by Accenture and CSC to provide its Lorenzo software for the NPfIT.

Delays in delivering Lorenzo have caused considerable angst at Accenture, and contributed to the financial woes of iSoft which announced a £348.3m loss in August.

The firm has suspended its commercial director and is under investigation by the Financial Services Authority.

Meanwhile, BT announced last week that it is close to finishing the broadband roll-out element of its NHS contract.