Cheshire East says no personal data shared amid IT flaw claims

The assurance came after Conservative group leader Janet Clowes told the corporate policy committee some schools were really concerned about the ‘system failures’ of the Best4Business HR and finance IT system, which has recently been introduced by the council.

“For example, inadvertently accessing the private details of staff in other schools when updating their own staff details suggests something's not quite right with firewall systems,” she said at Thursday’s meeting.

Cllr Janet Clowes

“Inaccurate wage payments or non-payments to staff; inappropriate salary payments between school budgets, which is quite concerning if you're trying to manage your own budget and you realise you've actually somehow been paying another school for their requirements.”

The Tory councillor said she was repeating what she had been told by some schools and the examples she had given were not exhaustive and were not staff training issues but due to ‘significant errors within the system’.

She said school staff were concerned and she understood the concerns of ‘these individuals who are inadvertently accessing private data, or where budgets are not necessarily working quite as they should’.

“Whilst I accept that the roll-out of a new IT system is a massive undertaking, and that in the largest part it is working well, nonetheless it does seem that the schools systems and the interfaces there are presenting particular problems,” said Cllr Clowes.

“We are now over six months into the launch of this. The additional support that was supposed to last for two months had to be extended and it is still running.”

Jane Burns, the council’s executive director of corporate services, told the committee there had been no breach of personal or sensitive data.

“Just one specific if I may on GDPR,” she said. “That was something that was raised but I'm satisfied that no personal sensitive data was actually shared.”

Mrs Burns said a ‘deep dive’ of the system overall is being undertaken so lessons can be learned.

“It clearly has been a large, complicated programme over a period of years and over change of council, change of officers, so complicated.”

She added some of the issues raised by schools had been investigated and some were down to user error rather than flaws in the system.

“We are paying, every month, 53,000 people, that includes pensioners,” said Mrs Burns. “We are paying our invoices, we are able to balance to the financial ledger.

“However, it's not perfect. It's not the situation I want it to be in.

“I know there have been individual issues with individual schools, that we have put in additional support. As I said, we're not in a situation yet where I'm satisfied with how things are working.”

Best4Business is a joint venture with Cheshire West and Chester Council and Mrs Burns said a shared services project is always going to be more complicated.

Cllr Jill Rhodes a member of the shared services joint committee, pointed out twice the system had been bought by the previous Conservative administration.

Cllr Jill Rhodes

“This system was commissioned in 2016. As an incoming administration, we inherited the decisions from the previous administration,” she said.

She added the support service was being extended to help deal with issues and they were being resolved.

Last month a Cheshire East headteacher told the council’s audit and governance committee how two members of staff from other Cheshire East schools had been paid from his school’s budget over a number of months.

He said issues kept arising and listed a catalogue of errors including one staff member being paid just 10 per cent of her salary.