18 June 2004
A tenfold increase in the bill for transferring the government communications headquarters (GCHQ) to new accommodation has been slated by the Commons' Public Accounts Committee.
In a report published this week, the PAC found that, between 1997 and 1999, estimates for moving GCHQ's technical capability into a new building outside Cheltenham under a Private Finance Initiative scheme increased from £41m to £450m.
The Treasury declined to fund the increase but after discussion agreed to contribute £216m to a revised budget of £308m, with the result that the transfer is now taking places in stages. One existing site is being kept open for seven years longer than planned, incurring extra costs of £43m.
GCHQ, which acts as the government's monitoring centre for secret and intelligence communications, insisted on retaining responsibility for the technical transfer for security reasons.
But, the report says, its experts failed to understand that the development of IT networking in the 1990s meant that the technical move would be 'hugely' complicated and evolve into a major systems upgrade.
PFjun2004
