That is the recommendation of a review which will be presented in private to councillors at Newtown on April 2.

The company, which will be selected by competitive tender, will meet all the ICT needs of both SBC and Edinburgh City Council whose existing outsourcing arrangement with BT is coming to an end.

Under the proposal, the SBC staff will transfer with their terms and conditions intact for one year.

Affected employees were briefed on the results of the study on Tuesday and told, in so many words, that the service was underperforming.

The main trade union involved, Unite, slammed the proposal, its regional industrial officer Tony Trench claiming: “It could be the next step to an independent Borders local authority vanishing altogether and being subsumed by Edinburgh.” A trend of in-house services being outsourced by SBC has already been established.

On April 1, a new organisation SB Cares will take over all adult care provision, involving 1,000 full and part-time staff, and later this year, libraries, museums, public halls and other so-called cultural services, along with 300 employees, are likely to be transferred to the trust which runs the region’s sports facilities.

During last week’s briefing, the employees were told the review, carried out by a firm of consultants and Edinburgh City Council, had been ordered to address “general criticisms/questions” including: “Why are other organisations benefiting hugely due to ICT and SBC is not? Why is the ICT function not helping transform the organisation? Why does it take so long to deliver new systems and modern ways of working?

“There is no clear governance model and the present structure…is not focused on customer service requirements. The ICT support structure exists in pockets across the council, resulting in a lack of clarity in who supports what.” One member of staff, Lee Myers, IT security officer at SBC, put his head above the parapet last Wednesday with an emailed appeal to councillors to reject the move and to instead pursue an alternative solution.

“I would like to ask councillors to join us to fight against this outsourcing, to reject the proposal and for us to work together on a Plan B that benefits the council, IT staff and the taxpayer and to help working towards improving services to all staff who use the IT department,” said Mr Myers He claimed that IT support delivered to schools would be the first to suffer and that even Edinburgh City Council no longer outsourced this service.

And he took issue with Philip Barr, SBC’s depute chief executive, who delivered last week’s briefing.

“Mr Barr told us that outsourcing would be good for staff as it will lead to more opportunities in cities around the UK and more training.

“Every member of IT would disagree with this. We work in the Borders because we love the area and the majority of IT staff have years of service with SBC. IT staff can earn more in the city, but we are here because we love our jobs, the quality of life the Borders has to offer and we want to stay in the area.

“SBC should be creating jobs for local people, supporting the local economy and improving life in the Borders, but outsourcing would go against this.

“IT staff are renowned for dropping what they are doing in the evening and at weekends to help SBC during major outages. All that good will…is being ignored and we need the council to listen to us.

“Outsourcing will unsettle all council staff, not just in IT, as other departments will now fear for their jobs.” Mr Myers called for a “competitive review” to be submitted to councillors on April 2 when the outsourcing proposal will be considered in private.

“This should be completed by relevant IT staff on the ground who have the customers’ best interests at heart and are keen to provide a better service,” said Mr Myers.

“Councillors should be required to spend time with IT staff to learn how a department of this nature operates on a day-to-day basis and what we can do together to improve SBC’s IT department for staff, schools and to provide value to the tax payer.

“A trainee programme should be introduced to bring in young people to learn new skills and enjoy a long career. Out of hours support should be agreed, a dedicated training department should be set up for all IT users.

“There is so much potential to improve things and all I ask is the chance to put forward a case.

“There is a solution out there that would be far more beneficial to SBC other than outsourcing.