An extra £1.3m will be spent although the details of exactly how aren’t yet clear
The IT system is supposed to make managing thousands of council homes easier(Image: Alex Seabrook)
A botched council IT project has left Bristol taxpayers footing an extra bill of more than £1 million after a two-year delay. Bristol City Council has been trying to roll out a new IT system to help manage its 27,000 council homes but this has suffered serious problems so far.
In 2022 the council launched a programme to roll out the new IT project by March 2024. The NEC Housing project was expected to cost £7.5 million, now thought to be “too optimistic”, and an initial version was launched in October last year, replete with problems such as bugs.
An extra £1,257,000 will now be spent on the botched IT project this financial year. An urgent decision was taken to approve the funding, councillors were told on the housing policy committee on Friday, December 19. Exactly what the money will be spent on is as yet unclear.
Sonia Furzland, interim executive director of housing, said: “It’s been more difficult than we had anticipated in terms of the complexity of it. The project itself was too years late and it is over the original budget estimate.”
Consultants advising the council believe the initial budget estimate was too optimistic. Parts of the new system aren’t “where we need it to be”, with the software suffering bugs and issues with data cleansing. But an upgrade should be rolled out soon, addressing these problems. A report detailing the issues and extra costs is expected to come to the housing committee next month.
Green Councillor Jerome Thomas said: “We’ve expressed concern about the IT project and dangers of cost overruns, without really having got under the bonnet and seeing what the project plan was.”
The former cabinet approved the £7.5 million to roll out the project in February 2023. All of this money has now been spent, and the system is not yet fully operational. The IT system should eventually help staff track problems such as damp and mould, particularly as new rules now apply to councils and social housing firms.