New finance system at Lancashire County Council causes delayed invoices across the county

At the start of the month, a business in West Lancashire called Q Local Ormskirk told the Post about an issue they had been facing, having to chase a delayed invoice from a local school.

Q Local Ormskirk, an online news platform, were informed by the school that the delay was due to a problem with a new system at Lancashire County Hall, which had reportedly led to “thousands” of delayed invoices, and so the Post has approached the council to find out more.

What does the council say?

A spokesperson said: "Lancashire County Council has recently implemented a new system for managing its Finance, HR and Payroll processes.

"As with any new system, especially one as large and complex as this, technical problems are to be expected, and our teams have been working on fixing these as a priority as we became aware of them.

"One issue has been around the delays to some payments and in early January an emergency payment system was introduced to ensure suppliers were not disadvantaged.

"These included the payment process for schools, which has now been resolved with supplier invoices being paid as normal.

"We are working to ensure any other outstanding issues are resolved quickly and apologise for any delays which have been experienced."

How many businesses were affected?

The council could not say how many businesses were affected but could say that around 600 schools use their payment system and so potentially a large number of invoices were held up simply because of the system’s size.

Is the problem resolved?

The initial payment problem started in January and the council can confirm that everything is now back to normal.

Regarding their mention of “any other outstanding issues”, the council confirmed these are being looked at if and when they are flagged.

Have there been any other issues?

Last month, Lancashire County Council referred itself to the Information Commissioner's Office following a data breach involving its new system. There was no evidence that personal data has been publicly available, only that it has been visible to internal users should someone want to find it.

There have also been some errors with people's leave allowances, but this is being corrected manually, using the old system’s records.