Council to Spend £560,000 on Obsolete System Fix – But Where’s the Oversight?

Folkestone & Hythe District Council is poised to spend more than half a million pounds on a long-overdue replacement for its internal finance and asset management systems, according to Cabinet report C/24/97, due for decision on 23 April 2025. But while the report makes a compelling case for the upgrade, it raises troubling questions about how the Council let its core systems become “obsolete and unsupported“—and why no one is being held to account.

It’s an admission that should set off alarms. For a local authority to run a finance system so outdated it requires “emails, paper forms, word documents and downloaded spreadsheets” is not just inefficient—it’s risky. The report itself concedes that “it would be unacceptable to have an unsupported Financial System as this could expose the Council to significant risk as it is a core system that runs through every aspect of the authority”

And yet, despite this risk, the council continued to rely on these creaking systems well past their expiry dates. The consequence? A recurring billing bug in the finance software “impacted many departments and delayed essential billing, requiring multiple officers to work exclusively on correcting these issues rather than their normal responsibilities”​

Even worse, the Asset Management System has been “unsupported for multiple years,” putting the council in a position where “any critical issues with the system will lead to high costs to bring in specialised support,” which is “not guaranteed to continue”​.

Yet nowhere in the 29-page report is there a single reference to how or why these systems were allowed to decay so badly. Nor is there any analysis of the oversight failures that led to this state of affairs. No accountability is proposed. Instead, the Cabinet is simply asked “to agree to grant delegated authority to the Director of Finance (s151) to appoint the preferred supplier” and to approve a £560,000 capital budget​.

It’s a fait accompli—and one with limited scrutiny. The report notes that the procurement tender closed with just “one compliant bid for Lot 1 and one compliant bid [for] Lot 3”. In effect, the Council is robbing Peter to pay Paul—and then calling it a saving.

The report also states that delays in procurement could push implementation to April 2027 due to accounting complications from mid-year system changes. But that logic cuts both ways: if the project is so critical to the Council’s future, why was it not initiated years ago, when the software was already known to be aging and unsupported?

And in a final flourish, the report assures readers that “there are no legal implications arising directly from this report,” “no equality and diversity implications,” and “no direct climate change implications.” In other words: no red flags, just a green light.

This may be good news for the software vendors and consultants—Moore Insight is supporting implementation, who began their £100,000 contract on the 12/08/2024—but it’s a poor showing for public accountability. A key digital infrastructure has been allowed to rot, public services have been disrupted, and a six-figure rescue package is now being hurried through with what appears to be minimal competition and minimal reflection on past failures.

The Council is right to modernise. But residents deserve to know how it came to this—and why no one is being held responsible.

The Shepway Vox Team

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