£1m a day bill to store unused PPE
Billions of NHS kits in containers
HUGE stockpiles of excess PPE are costing the Government £1million a day to store, the Mirror can reveal today.
It includes thousands of shipping containers piled high beside the UK’s largest commercial port.
Over the past four months, the Department of Health paid contractor Uniserve £124m for “storage costs”.
The Good Law Project’s Gemma Abbott has hit out at the “grotesque waste of public money”.
She said: “Not only did the Government squander billions on over-priced PPE that can’t be used but it turns out their mistakes are still costing taxpayers millions.”
The Good Law Project is also challenging No10’s Covid contracts.
The Mirror can now reveal the Department of Health spent £7m this summer buying shipping containers to slash storage costs for tens of billions of items of PPE.
A spokesman said it was a costeffective way to meet storage needs.
During the first six months of the pandemic, officials paid £12.5bn for kit – 86 times more than the £146m NHS trusts spent in 2019.
The department forked out five times more than pre-Covid prices and got enough to last five years.
Health Minister Lord Bethell said £2.8bn worth of stock has been found to be unusable by the NHS.
The Mirror tracked down many of the 3,000 unopened containers.
Drone images reveal dramatic changes at three sites used to store PPE near Felixstowe port in Suffolk.
They show up to 1,000 containers at Mendlesham Airfield, which is subject to a planning battle. A neighbour said: “The pile was going down until about six weeks ago when more arrived.”
Containers have been also spotted near Melton railway station and at the Port of Ipswich. It was reported PPE is being held at these sites but not confirmed.
The National Audit Office said: “The Government has budgeted an unprecedented £15bn to buy PPE for England during 2020-21.
“Hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of PPE will not be used for the original intended purpose.”
The Health department said: “There are robust processes to ensure value for money and we have set out plans for managing excess stock of PPE.” nick.sommerlad@mirror.co.uk
@NickSommerlad