Barnet Council's Finance and Growth Overview and Scrutiny Sub-Committee has raised significant concerns regarding invoicing issues within adult social care, pointing to systemic problems with the council's Oracle system that have persisted for at least a decade.
The committee, meeting on Monday, July 20, 2026, was informed that the Oracle system struggles with backdated invoicing and payment plans, leading to unsatisfactory
outcomes. Specifically, the system generates a new dunning letter for every debt rather than consolidating them, and it does not handle payment plans effectively. Despite repeated attempts to address these issues, the report notes that adults have not worked out how to invoice people in the right way after all this time.
Councillor Ezra Cohen described the situation as cannot be allowed to stand
and called for a detailed explanation or a separate report to Cabinet outlining how adult social care is addressing the problem. Anissa Darr, Executive Director of Finance, acknowledged the system's shortcomings. She highlighted that the adult social care collection team's work is complex, involving case management rather than straightforward debt collection, and suggested that an off-Oracle solution
needs to be prioritised to address issues like dunning letters and payment plans.
The financial impact of these invoicing issues, while not quantified with a specific figure, is substantial. At the end of the financial year, there was £19.139 million in unsecured debt related to individuals receiving adult social care, with £15.105 million of this being over 90 days old. The report attributes the increase in historical debt within Adults largely to the implementation of Oracle, which has resulted in delayed dunning letters, payment plans, and direct debit processing.
Officers are exploring improvements through additional technology
and workarounds.
While not fully detailed, this could involve solutions that sit on top of
Oracle to perform functions it cannot, such as a bot for reconciliations. The Adult Social Care collection team is also actively working on building team skills and capability in tandem with the system team to improve processes. This long-standing concern, dating back over 10 years and predating Oracle's implementation, has seen previous attempts to make Oracle work for dunning letters, which proved unsatisfactory.
The Adult Social Care collection team's workload is described as really case management
rather than just debt collection, and it is acknowledged as complex and complicated.
The team is working towards defining what does good look like
and has been building its skills and capability to better manage these processes.
Read the full public reports pack for the meeting here: Public reports pack 20th Jul 2026
