By Lindsay Clark
Publication Date: 2026-01-13 11:00:00
Birmingham City Council has postponed the relaunch of its troubled ERP system Oracle Fusion, saying staff need more time to adapt to the provider’s standard processes.
The launch at Europe’s largest council follows a disastrous Oracle Fusion go-live in 2022, which left the authority unable to produce auditable financial statements and contributed to it being effectively bankrupt. The total cost of switching to Oracle has risen to around £131m from an initial business estimate of £19m.
In 2020, the council planned to replace an old SAP system with a standard Oracle implementation. However, the project involved extensive customization, including a bank reconciliation system that ultimately did not work properly. When these errors prevented the council from submitting compliant accounts, it changed course, reimplemented Oracle out of the box and adopted off-the-shelf third-party bank reconciliation software, which it renamed Income…
