Four years after Oxfordshire County Council installed a computer system to monitor its financial affairs it is still forking out millions of pounds to iron out defects.

County Hall took delivery of a package called Systems Applications Products (SAP) in 2001, but has experienced ongoing problems mainly because few people inside the authority know how to use it.

By 2008 the cost of properly training staff and investing money in the system could top £7m, according to a County Hall report.

The SAP system replaced an ageing financial monitoring package introduced in the 1980s and is an all-embracing business system used to process invoices and root out accounting flaws.

But the project has been described as an expensive waste of time by a leading councillor.

A report to be tabled at today's (March 15) policy-making executive meeting reveals "only a small cohort of SAP training expertise" exists within the authority.

By the end of this month nearly £1m will have been spent on consultants' fees and "incidental items" like accommodation and staff-related expenditure alone.

Labour opposition leader Liz Brighouse said: "It seems to me that we're constantly throwing good money after bad. If it works then the system should deliver better financial management services.

"But in getting to that stage it seems this has been very good for consultants because it's been just another almighty shambles. "Outside experts are all very well, but they leave you with a problem if the people inside can't manage it.

"We already spend £2m extra a year on what was originally budgeted for -- and I just don't understand it.

"Four years of this council has been wasted on trying to get a financial management system that works -- it's as fundamental as that."

Although the SAP system, which costs about £1.8m a year to run, was installed in 2001, specialists from software giant IBM have already been drafted in to sort out problems.

Last year a damning report by independent financial management investigators, RSM Robson Rhodes, revealed the county council was wide open to fraud because of serious flaws in financial management.

The investigators classed County Hall's controls and systems as "seriously below standard".

John Jackson, the council's director of resources, added: "SAP was installed properly, but we did not change our processes to make sure that we got all the benefits out of it that we could.

"To save money we under-invested in the project so did not put anything like enough investment into training people and changing our processes. The current project is designed to put this right. We are spending money now that should have been spent in the beginning.

"In due course we expect this expenditure will lead to cash savings, which will help to keep down the council tax increase."