Scrapped Fire Centres Project Cost £469m

A project to replace fire and rescue control rooms in England with nine regional centres ended in "complete failure" and cost the taxpayer £469m, MPs have found.

The Public Accounts Committee has said the Firecontrol plan is one of the worst project failures it has seen and was "flawed from the outset".

The plan, launched by the previous Labour government in 2004, was scrapped by the coalition last year after a number of expensive delays.

The committee reports that a minimum of £469m had been wasted - and eight of the purpose-built new centres remain empty, costing the taxpayer £4m a month to maintain.

Only five of the centres will be used by the fire service, the report adds.

It has also criticised the Department for Communities and Local Government for excluding fire and rescue services about the design and content of the new centres.

The report says: "The project had convoluted governance arrangements, with a lack of clarity over roles and responsibilities.

"There was a high turnover of senior managers, although none have been held accountable for the failure.

"The committee considers this to be an extraordinary failure of leadership. Yet no individuals have been held accountable for the failure and waste associated with this project."

Committee chairman Margaret Hodge said: "The department's ambitious vision of abolishing 46 local fire and rescue control rooms around the country and replacing them with nine state-of-the-art regional control centres ended in complete failure.

"The taxpayer has lost nearly half a billion pounds and eight of the completed regional control centres remain as empty and costly white elephants.

"The project was rushed, without proper understanding of costs or risks.

"The leadership relied far too much on external consultants and the frequent departures of senior staff also contributed to weak management and oversight of the project.

"The contract to implement a national IT system linking the control centres was not even awarded until a full three years after the project started.

"The contract itself was poorly designed and awarded to a company without relevant experience. The computer system was simply never delivered.

"No one has been held to account for this project failure, one of the worst we have seen for many years, and the careers of most of the senior staff responsible have carried on as if nothing had gone wrong at all - and the consultants and contractor continue to work on many other Government projects."

Fire Minister Bob Neill said: "John Prescott's Firecontrol project is the latest in Labour's catalogue of costly IT failures.

"I welcome this report which exposes the absence of basic project management and leadership for a major undertaking. Labour must be held accountable for this comprehensive failure."