Europe's largest local authority has delayed the introduction of a vital income management system (IMS) amid confirmation that total spending on a disastrous Oracle implementation could hit £170 million (c $230 million).

Elected representatives of Birmingham City Council's audit committee vented their frustration this week after hearing that the rollout of the IMS – designed to replace the council's banking reconciliation system (BRS), which went so badly wrong after the April 2022 go-live of Oracle Fusion – is to be postponed again.

The council's financial management has been unable to file auditable accounts since it replaced an aging – but functioning – SAP system with new cloud-based software from Oracle. Although the council had expected to implement the system out-of-the-box, it made customized modifications including the introduction of the BRS, which failed to function as planned. The council was declared effectively bankrupt in September 2023, because of the ERP disaster and outstanding equal pay claims. It is now working to reimplement Oracle from scratch and go live in April next year.

In the meantime, it is implementing the IMS. In March 2024, the council decided to buy the off-the-shelf software to resolve the BRS customization issues from the initial Oracle deployment, opting for a CivicaPay solution, which it said would "go live no later than March 31, 2025."