Benefit backlog blamed on £2m IT system

The problematic rollout of a £2m computer system at Castle Morpeth borough council is being blamed for the authority failing to meet national benefit payment processing targets.

The council began the implementation of the iWorld managed service from Sx3 last July but over a year later problems with the system have still not been resolved.

This has impacted on the council's ability to process housing benefit and council tax claims and a report by the government's Benefit Fraud Inspectorate released this week found it missed national targets.

Chris Philips, revenues manager at Castle Morpeth borough council, told silicon.com: "It is ongoing. We went live last July – a very faltering go-live - and we have had problems since with the software. The impact the problems have had is that performance against national targets is well adrift."

Benefit claims were taking more than double the national target of 36 days to turnaround, while processing of changes to claims was taking four times the national average of 9 days, according to the BFI report. This resulted in benefits overpayments occurring unnecessarily. The BFI report concluded the problems "resulted in the main" from the new benefits IT system.

The council has assigned a "hit squad" to tackle the backlog of claims but Philips would not say whether the council is looking to ditch the system.

He said: "We are working closely with the supplier to try and improve things and we are also looking closely at the service level agreement we have with them on the service they provide."

Malcom Fowler, managing director of Sx3's applications division, said there had been issues with the scale of migrating information from the council's legacy systems and that there have been "clear improvements" since January.

He said: "It is worth noting that Castle Morpeth Borough Council is an authority with limited staff and resources which has taken on a massive IT implementation project. This has involved the simultaneous migration of its revenues, benefits and housing systems, including data migration from legacy systems."