A new IT system for Cheshire East Council called “Best4Business” has ended up being “Worse4Taxpayer” after costing more than double the original £11.8 million, a report shows.
The HR and Payroll project took several years to implement and was dogged with disputes and delays, a “Lessons Learned” review highlights.
The report shows the new system – a joint enterprise between CEC and Cheshire West – has cost taxpayers a staggering £25.1 million.
And forecast annual savings which were originally estimated at £2.5million have dropped to £1.7 million, according to the report.
It means it could take almost 15 years to recover the costs of the project – almost the same age as the old IT system it replaced.
Each minor delay to the new system “going live” also cost taxpayers between £600,000 and £700,000, the review points out.
The decision to award a contract worth £11.8 million to technology firm Agilisys was taken by Cabinets of both councils back in 2017.
The report adds: “In the first implementation phase of the programme, some delays occurred in the timelines needed to achieve the programme milestones set out in our contract with the supplier, and extensions to the go live date were agreed, targeting November 2018 and then March 2019, at a contract cost of between £600,000 and £700,00 for each extension.”
There were so many problems with the new system, that councils decided to “pause and reset the programme and change the programme
management arrangements in November 2019”.
It was labelled “a significant and bold decision” in the review.
But aborting the whole scheme at this point would have cost the councils around £13.9 million.
More delays and costs followed, as reported by Nantwich News in 2019 and 2020, until it could go live at various stages in 2021.
The report adds: “By this stage, due to the revised relationship with the system supplier, the risk of legal challenge arising from a decision to abandon the programme was much lower.
“However, the sunk cost of the programme at each point was significant, and the cost of restarting the procurement and implementation process from scratch remained a significant factor.”
There have also been complaints since the new system went live, with one headteacher in May this year calling it a shambles over wrong and missing payments.
Jane Burns, executive director – corporate services, Cheshire East Council, said: “This has been a significant joint endeavour across both councils.
“Despite the challenges experienced, we managed to implement the new system, fundamentally changing the way we operate, while ensuring that our staff and our suppliers still got paid with relatively few individual issues.
“The programme review has shown us the importance of communication, engagement and training activity when implementing a new system like this – we have learned a lot together throughout the programme.”
Mark Wynn, chief operating officer, Cheshire West and Chester Council, said: “With a programme of this scale and complexity, it is important to step back to reflect on the ‘lessons learned’.
“The review has provided many useful points of learning, covering many aspects of the programme.
“Difficult decisions had to be made at various points to ensure delivery of an appropriate solution.
“Now that it is in place, both Cheshire East and Cheshire West and Chester’s finance and HR processes will be supported for years to come.”
You can read the full “lessons learned” report here.
The report is due to go before councillors on the Cheshire East Council and Cheshire West & Chester Council Shared Services Joint Committee on Friday (September 23)
Dave your response is as baffling and confusing as the article, are you for it or against it? No wonder CE are in a mess.
I work in a school and have found it impossible to talk to a human being about HR or Payroll issues the new system is a working from home disaster.
What a load of rubbish, those responsible should be held accountable, total incompetence at all levels of the plan design and delivery of the project
“The programme review has shown us the importance of communication, engagement and training activity when implementing a new system like this – we have learned a lot together throughout the programme.”
We’ve been doing major IT projects for 60+ years. If you didn’t realise that communication, engagement etc were important parts of a project of this size YOU WERE NOT QUALIFIED TO BE INVOLVED. Is it too much to ask that we keep the incompetents away from the chequebooks?
Was one of the things learned how to avoid wasting millions of other peoples money? Time will tell.
Let’s look at it, this started in 2017 and I think none of the present Chief Officers were in post, the others have gone to pastures new. However, some of the present set up must have been involved in the later stages and surely the public should have been kept informed of this debacle. Just look what we have endured in the past few months due to poor management, Middlewich Road closure now extended to 2023 including poor road directions, really bad signage on most road closure/works, very poor road surface conditions etc. The only good functioning part of the Council is the refuse collection service – in all the Covid-19 period we had only one collection day missed and that was made up a few days later. Perhaps the Waste Collection Officers should take over!