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Written question asked by Lord Hogan-Howe (Crossbench) on Tuesday, 25 February 2025, in the House of Lords. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 11 March 2025. It was answered by Lord Hanson of Flint (Labour) on Tuesday, 11 March 2025 on behalf of the Home Office.

Emergency Services Network

Question

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the answer by Lord Hanson of Flint on 24 February (HL Deb col 1448), what is the breakdown of the £19.2 billion cost for the Emergency Services Network programme.

Answer

The £19.2bn cost for the Emergency Services Network (ESN) covers the period 2015/16 to 2043/44, and is broken down as follows:

Programme Delivery spend is £3.2bn, this includes the cost of developing the ESN network, the Mission Critical Communications (MCX) solution, and includes infrastructure costs.

Ongoing run costs for ESN are calculated at £9.9bn. This includes service charges for both the Mobile Services and User Services contracts.

The continued operation of the Airwave network during the delivery phase of the Programme, and up until completion of transition to ESN is £6.1bn. These legacy costs are expected to last until the final transition date of December 2029, when these legacy systems are expected to be fully replaced by ESN.

These costs, when compared to the estimated cost of running Airwave for the entire period of evaluation, are considerably lower.

Of the £19.2bn, £5.5bn has been spent up to 31 March 2024, with the remaining £13.7bn to be spent by 2043/44.

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
HL5251
Session
2024-26
Related items
Emergency Service Network Programme
Monday, 24 February 2025
Oral answers to questions
House of Lords
Subjects
Costs Emergency services network
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.parliament.uk