New 999 radio system £3bn over budget and five years late

AN UPGRADED radio system for police, fire and ambulance crews will be at least five years late and £3billion more expensive than planned, a report out today warns.

The project is meant to allow 999 services to share a super-fast communications network run by the mobile giant EE.

It will be far more advanced than the current system and, for example, it will allow fire crews to watch videos of a blaze as they travel to the scene.

But a report by the Government spending watchdog predicts that the Emergency Services Network (ESN) will not be in use until 2022 at the very earliest. And it lays the blame on the Home Office.

The system was overseen by Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill when permanent secretary at the Home Office between 2013 and 2017.

Last month he was criticised by MPs over the ESN and another botched project he supervised, the Disclosure and Barring Services digitisation programme. But he told the public accounts committee: ‘I don’t accept ... that they failed. These were ambitious programmes, and very challenging. We always knew that it was a high-risk programme.’

Sir Mark added that he was ‘always uneasy about the level of ambition and the pace’ of ESN. The latest report says ESN is expected to cost at least £9.3billion – £3.1billion more than planned – and there are concerns that some of the technology has still not been tested. Two years ago MPs questioned whether the new system would even be able to work on the London Underground. At the moment, all 999 services communicate through a digital network known as Airwave. The Home Office decided to replace this with the ESN in 2011 and it was initially meant to be ready by 2017. The National Audit Office’s report predicts that the Government’s new target of 2022 – five years late – is now looking ‘unlikely’.

Sir Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said: ‘The success of the network is critical to the dayto-day operations of our emergency services.

‘The Home Office needs a comprehensive plan with a realistic timetable that properly considers risks and uncertainties. It has already been through one costly reset and is in danger of needing another unless it gets its house in order.’

Meg Hillier, chairman of the public accounts committee, said: ‘ The Home Office must take an urgent and honest examination of its ability to deliver to its new schedule for this critical project.’

Although the system is expected to be cheaper than Airwave in the long-run, savings will not outweigh costs until at least 2029. The report concludes: ‘ To date, the Home Office’s management of this critical programme has represented poor value for money.’

‘Get its house in order’