Exclusive: Taxpayer funding ‘bribes’ on empty fire HQ

Sir Bob Kerslake, Whitehall’s most senior civil servant, told MPs he is “reconciled” to the Government not being able to cover the annual rental costs it is still paying for the £14m building in Wakefield, even when a use for it is finally found.

The purpose-built centre, which has never been used and is one of four still standing empty around the country, costs taxpayers around £5,000 a day in rent and running costs.

Government efforts to sub-let it to emergency services or other public bodies in Yorkshire have comprehensively failed, and it is now on the open market.

“I can’t give you an assured date of when we’ll get somebody to take (the empty control centres),” Sir Bob admitted to a hearing of the Commons public accounts committee.

“They are high-cost, high-spec buildings. They are going to take some shifting.”

The aborted Fire Control project, launched by John Prescott in 2004, is widely seen as one of the worst excesses of the New Labour years.

Nine multi-million pound centres were built across England to house new ‘regionalised’ emergency call centres – but the IT systems failed and the project spiralled out of control.

By the time the scheme was finally cancelled in 2010, the taxpayer had wasted £469m on a scheme originally designed to cost £120m and which never even got off the ground. But with the Government locked into long-term PFI deals for all nine properties, costs are still rising with every passing day.

Five of the centres have now been rented out. But Sir Bob admitted “subsidies” – including one worth £1.2m – had been needed to encourage tenants in, and he warned it was “inconceivable” the Government will ever recover the full rent it is paying out.

“On the ones that we have done, we have already had to put in some funding in order to make them work – rent-free periods and so on – and we will have to look at each one on its merits and see what offers we get.

“We will do the best deal that we can on the buildings – but I want to say that we are reconciled to the fact that, in my view, it is inconceivable that we will fully recover the rental costs on these.”

Committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge described the payments as “bribes” and added: “This was a really pretty awful project; indeed, it is probably one of the worst examples of waste we have seen as a committee.”

Sir Bob said the Government is even considering whether to spend more money on converting the centres so they are more enticing to firms or public bodies.

“The other thing we are looking at is whether it is worth investing funds to convert some parts of the building to make them more usable,” he said.

“Those costs are quite high. At the moment we have stopped short of that, but we are exploring every avenue to use up the four remaining buildings.

Speaking afterwards, Fire Minister Brandon Lewis said the “botched” scheme had been “a disaster from start to finish”, and attacked Labour for failing to insert clauses into the PFI deals which might have allowed the Government to escape its liabilities for the unwanted centres.

“The last Government failed to provide break clauses in the leases,” he said. “We are thus stuck with these buildings until we can find someone willing to rent them and take on the costs. This is clearly unsatisfactory, but this Government has taken firm action to protect the public purse and minimise the liabilities we have inherited.”