News / bristol city council
Botched council IT project sees bill rise by £1.2m after two-year delay
An attempt by Bristol City Council to roll out a new IT system to help manage its 27,000 council homes has suffered serious problems.
The botched project approved under the former mayoral system has left Bristol taxpayers footing an extra bill of more than £1.2m after a two-year delay.
One senior Green councillor said he has still not “got under the bonnet and seeing what the project plan was”.
In 2022, the council launched a programme to roll out the new IT project by March 2024.
The NEC Housing project was expected to cost £7.5m, now thought to be “too optimistic”, and an initial version was launched in October last year replete with problems such as bugs.
An extra £1.26m will now be spent on the IT project this financial year.
An urgent decision was taken to approve the funding, councillors were told on the housing policy committee at the end of 2025. Exactly what the money will be spent on is as yet unclear.
Bristol City Council’s interim executive director of housing, Sonia Furzland, said: “It’s been more difficult than we had anticipated in terms of the complexity of it.
“The project itself was too years late and it is over the original budget estimate.”
Consultants advising the council believe the initial budget estimate was too optimistic.
Parts of the new system are not “where we need it to be”, with the software suffering bugs and issues with data cleansing.
But an upgrade should be rolled out soon addressing these problems, and a report detailing the issues and extra costs is expected to come to the housing committee in February.
Green councillor Jerome Thomas said: “We’ve expressed concern about the IT project and dangers of cost overruns, without really having got under the bonnet and seeing what the project plan was.”
The former cabinet approved the £7.5m to roll out the project in February 2023. All of this money has now been spent and the system is not yet fully operational.
The IT system should eventually help staff track problems such as damp and mould, particularly as new rules now apply to councils and social housing firms.
A spokesperson for NEC Software Solutions said: “NEC was awarded a £3.7m contract in March 2023 to provide housing software over a five-year period.
“Phase 1 of this project was delivered in October 2025. The NEC system is live and in use.
“The customer has requested some additional requirements since the system went live, which is normal for a project of this size and we are working to fulfil those.”
Main photo: Martin Booth
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