The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has quietly shelved a £140m IT system originally designed to integrate the payment of a range of benefits. 

The Benefits Processing Replacement Programme (BPRP) was announced three years ago with a brief to save £60m a year by making the benefits payment process more joined up.

The project was doomed from January when the new Employment Support Allowance (ESA) was introduced, changing the original aims of the BPRP. However, parts of the BPRP system will be reused by the DWP for ESA processes. 

Last month, vnunet.com's sister title Computing.co.uk reported that the DWP's debt management unit, responsible for recovering money owed to the government from benefit fraud or overpayments, had a backlog of more than half a million cases caused by software problems. 

The DWP announced in July that the crisis-plagued Child Support Agency was closing following the failure of its £450m computer system to deal with the number of claims.