Thousands of IT issues reported at troubled council

Issues with Birmingham City Council's IT system mean it has not been able to produce accurate accounts.

Users of a flagship IT system at Birmingham City Council reported 8,000 issues in its first six months online, according to auditors.

Oracle's system was supposed to streamline payment and HR processes but its full implementation is now more than three years overdue.

An audit report being discussed on Wednesday says the problems mean the authority faces a risk of theft and fraud which is "inherently high".

In May last year, the council revealed the total cost of the project could reach £100m, five times the original estimate.

Three months later, a local authority report outlined how council teams had sought to customise the system rather than accept it as it stood, in a bid to fit the existing way teams conducted business.

Chief financial officer Fiona Greenway (middle) spoke at the council's audit committee

Chief financial officer Fiona Greenway told the council's audit committee on Wednesday that her team had been under extreme pressure.

She said more than 270 staff had not been listened to when trying to raise IT concerns for over a year.

"The level of trust I am having to try and build up with the teams is really difficult," she said.

The authority effectively declared itself bankrupt in September, citing the cost of the project, alongside a £760m bill for equal pay claims, as key pressures on its finances.

In a report to the council's audit committee, external auditors say the 8,000 issues were reported in the months after Oracle went live in April 2022.

The authority's total workforce is about 10,000.

Among the problems identified were serious flaws which enabled staff to access and potentially alter data outside their areas of responsibility.

Staff grievances

The issues have also hampered effective budgetary control at the local authority, with departments not receiving financial monitoring reports and last year's budget still to be finalised.

The current state of the system also means some school staff have raised grievances against the council because they have not been paid correctly.

In May, the BBC spoke to one school governor who said it had been visited by bailiffs demanding payments for leased minibuses, because of problems with the new IT software.

An inability of the system to alert managers about staff allowances could also result in others being overpaid.

In a separate report to the same committee, accounting firm Grant Thornton said it had asked for "additional safeguards" amid concerns about "an unacceptable working environment" for its staff.

It is also considering whether suggestions by "an external organisation" that it could raise complaints about it constituted an intimidation threat under financial reporting standards.