Birmingham City Council did not tell its official auditors about the disastrous Oracle implementation for ten months after the suite of applications went live, and appeared to obstruct access to the new system needed to complete their work.

Since it replaced aging SAP finance software with Oracle’s cloud-based Fusion for HR, payroll, ERP, and finance in April 2022, Europe’s largest local authority found the system “effectively crippled” its ability to manage and report on finances, auditors found. It was still not “safe and compliant” two-and-a-half years after the replacement went live, according to evidence presented to the council in January.

While the debacle hit local media headlines in May 2022 after schools were left unable to pay their bills and a series of complex manual workarounds were required to operate the system, councillors didn’t begin to discuss the failures until April 2023.

During a council audit committee meeting last week, external auditor Mark Stocks, Grant Thornton Midlands public sector assurance practice lead, was quizzed over why his team had not raised the alarm earlier. Stocks said the situation with Birmingham City Council’s Oracle implementation was “unprecedented” in his experience.

Parts of this article appeared earlier in The Register here