Troubled Birmingham City Council IT system led to bailiffs at school

A flawed IT system at Birmingham City Council has led to a primary school being visited by bailiffs and staff not being paid, a governor says.

Oracle deals with payroll, invoices and HR, and other council-run schools in the city are facing similar issues, governor Nigel Smith said.

A lease firm tried to seize minibuses used by the school via the council after payments were not made or lost.

The council accepted there had been issues and was trying to correct them.

New council leader John Cotton told BBC News on Wednesday the flagship IT system could now cost up to £100m - five times its original budget.

No money would be cut from other services to pay for it, he said.

Mr Smith said his school, which manages an annual budget of £2m, first began experiencing problems about 18 months ago when new staff were not being added to the council payroll and consequently not being paid.

"Or other members of staff were receiving incorrect salaries... normally being underpaid with no explanation being given whatsoever," he said.

One member of staff had to receive an emergency payment from the school before the school holidays started as they had not been paid.

"The member of staff would simply have been off work with no pay whatsoever," Mr Smith said, adding he understood his school's experience was shared by others in the city.

He said items leased by the school came out of its budget, but are paid by the city council and in many cases payments "have simply never been made or, have been lost in a system".

Mr Smith said bailiffs and lease companies had been sympathetic once they were made aware the fault did not lie with the school.

"But it's taking hours sometimes in emergency situations to resolve these actions," he said.

"We take senior members out of class teaching time, why we have to do this?"

Mr Smith said he had written to local MP Khalid Mahmood, who had since contacted the council to resolve the issues, as well as the former leader of the council, Ian Ward.

"Unfortunately we didn't get a reply to that email at all," he said.

"One of the roles of a governor is to oversee the spending of public money.

"We have an annual budget in excess of £2m - hand on heart I cannot have any faith that our systems are up-to-date, and that's a lot of money."

In a statement, the council said implementing the new system had "resulted in reduced functionality of day-to-day operational services across finance, payroll and some HR services" and correcting the problems was of "paramount importance".

"We understand that this has had and may potentially continue to negatively impact some schools until such time as the issues are resolved."

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