Birmingham City Council has successfully reimplemented its Oracle Fusion finance and HR system, but historic data problems mean auditors still cannot fully verify its accounts. Grant Thornton expects to issue disclaimer opinions for 2025/26, 2026/27 and 2027/28, leaving stakeholders without independent assurance that the figures are reliable.

The rebuilt system has performed far better than the original 2022 implementation, with no outstanding high-priority issues compared with 311 open tickets and two major incidents previously. However, the wider Oracle programme is expected to cost £144.4 million, potentially £216 million including lost savings, and the council is unlikely to receive a clean audit opinion before 2028/29 after years of reconciliation problems and costly manual workarounds.