Auditors slam failed fire and rescue plan

30 Jun 11
The project to replace England’s 46 local fire and rescue service control rooms with nine regional inter-linked centres was branded a 'comprehensive failure' by auditors today.
By Vivienne Russell | 1 July 2011


The project to replace England’s 46 local fire and rescue service control rooms with nine regional inter-linked centres was branded a ‘comprehensive failure’ by auditors today.

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The National Audit Office found that at least £469m has been wasted on the FiReControl project, which was scrapped by ministers in December.

The NAO’s report concludes that the project was flawed from the outset because it lacked the support of local fire services. The Department for Communities and Local Government was criticised for trying to impose a centralised IT system on the fire service when it lacked the necessary powers and without consulting properly.

‘Local [fire] bodies prize their distinctiveness and the freedom they have to choose their own equipment,’ the auditors note.

Other problems highlighted include a failure to follow proper procedures at the start of the project, which led to ‘broad-brush and inaccurate estimates of costs and benefits and an unrealistic delivery timetable’.

The DCLG failed to provide adequate leadership and relied too much on a poorly managed team of consultants, the report says.

NAO head Amyas Morse said: ‘This is yet another example of a government IT project taking on a life of its own, absorbing ever-increasing resources without reaching its objectives.

‘The rationale and benefits of a regional approach were unclear and badly communicated to locally accountable fire and rescue services who remained unconvinced.

‘It was approved on the basis of unrealistic estimates of costs and under-appreciation of the complexity of the IT involved – and the project was hurriedly implemented and poorly managed. Its legacy is the chain of expensive regional control centres whose future is uncertain.’

Public Accounts Committee chair Margaret Hodge said the NAO’s report on FiReControl was ‘in a league of its own’.

She said she would have some ‘tough questions’ for the DCLG when it comes before the PAC next week.

‘With the estimated cost of the project ballooning from £120m to four times as much, whilst running at least five years behind schedule, why did it take so long to put this project out of its misery and scrap it?’

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