Council to spend £2.5m on computers

A computer system costing £2.54 million is to be installed at council offices in the Wyre Forest district despite the credit crunch and money trapped in Icelandic accounts.

But council leaders say the move to a more modern system will improve council services and enable savings to be made.

Council leader councillor John Campion told cabinet members of Wyre Forest District Council last night that he felt it was "an exercise worth embarking on."

The new system would eventually mean the authority could work "smarter and more efficiently".

The new computers, which will be introduced up to 2012, will enable the council to operate from a single site. Work is now spread out across about seven offices in Kidderminster, Stourport and Bewdley.

Wyre Forest District Council is facing a funding crisis because it has £9million invested in troubled Icelandic banks.

But councillor Nathan Desmond said: "We cannot continue with the present system which is obsolete.

"After year four or five we will start to make savings of about £500,000-a-year which will go back into the budget for services."

He said that the move would ease the move to paperless offices and the process of issuing things like taxi driver licences.