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Computer bug blamed for council overspend
7:59am Friday 27th June 2008
Comments (4)
A COMPUTER bug is being blamed for Worcester City Council overspending its budget by more than £200,000 last year.
Tory cabinet member for finance Roger Knight said the council had been on track to meet its spending plan with only a few weeks of the last financial year to go – only to find a glitch in a piece of computer software was masking the fact the city had actually overspent by £204,000.
The city has now had to plug the gap from its dwindling cash reserves, but insists it will be able to recover the money over the course of the coming year with “no impact to council taxpayers”.
Presenting the council’s end-of-year accounts to the audit committee, Coun Knight said he was “extremely disappointed” to be reporting a £204,000 overspend from the council’s £54 million budget.
“Some weeks back we were looking at a break-even figure for the year,” he said.
“But then a new version of this particular piece of software came out and one cell, which had been showing a surplus of £200,000, was suddenly reduced to zero.”
He blamed a piece of software called Academy, which some councils use to manage benefit accounts.
“It’s very disappointing, but there’s nothing we can do about it,” he said.
“This happened to all local authorities to a lesser or greater extent who use the Academy software.”
Coun Knight said that earlier in the year the council had been on course for a far greater overspend, but that emergency cutbacks which were made in January had been effective in reducing the deficit.
“If we hadn’t successfully embarked on a round of savings then, this would have been an overspend of £400,000,” he said.
He said three key areas were to blame for the council’s financial woes during the previous year.
l The council failed to save anywhere near as much money as it had forecast by being more efficient. Cost – £223,000 l The actual cost of offering elderly people free bus travel was not fully met by the Government, leaving the city to pick up the extra bill. Cost – £182,000.
l The amount people are spending in city car parks is falling, meaning the council overestimated how much cash they would bring in. Cost –£166,000.
However, the cutbacks elsewhere meant the final net overspend was £204,000, he said.
Your Say YourWorcester News
local resident, worcester says...
1:17pm Fri 27 Jun 08
And after all the extra money they are taking off us above the rate of inflation. They should have more money available to put into the stupid schemes they come up with.
Logik, Worcester says...
2:35pm Fri 27 Jun 08
They seem to be blaming the software in which case the software is not fit for purpose. Perhaps they should consider seeking damages for the software company. There again it is more likely to be a user error but they are just are unwilling to admit it.
jb, worcester says...
7:46pm Fri 27 Jun 08
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CJH, Worcester says...
12:53pm Fri 27 Jun 08
The thing with computers is they are absolutely great, but they are only machines, and need monitoring to make sure they are behaving properly. Do the council not employ any accountants? They should have a rough idea of how much money they have, regardless of what the computer says - checks and balances are essential with this much money surely. I wonder what the auditors will say...