Well of course....
"In 2004, the council worked with Capgemini to implement SAP R/3 to run finance, HR and payroll" see above.
So now the options are £2 million for a hardware upgrade, and ongoing software costs a bit more than before ..
OR £40 million for all the current buzzphrase gaga stuff that sure as hell won't match current work practices - just like the SAP dinosaur shit didn't.
Anyone noticed a strong smell of brown-paper envelopes?