Birmingham estimated £20m for its Oracle system. It is set to cost £144m.
Birmingham City Council, Europe's largest local authority, will go at least one more year without auditors vouching for its accounts, The Register reported.
Its auditor, Grant Thornton, expects to issue "disclaimer opinions" for 2025/26, 2026/27 and 2027/28 because of problems with old data. A disclaimer means the auditor cannot get enough evidence to give an opinion, although the council still produces accounts.
The rebuilt Oracle Fusion finance and HR system started running in August. The auditor called the switch largely successful and said the second attempt "appears to have been better managed than the original 2022 implementation."
The first system, switched on in April 2022, left the council unable to reconcile its bank accounts. The plan was to run Oracle "out of the box". Instead, the council added customisations, including a bank reconciliation design that did not work. Manual workarounds have cost more than £5 million.
The whole programme, including the rebuild, is set to cost about £144.4 million. A clean audit is not expected before 2028/29, about a decade after it began.
Who in your programme signs off a customisation to the bank reconciliation?
Sources
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