Terse Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 We often complain about our island's government being seen as a 'soft touch' when it comes to various projects that require funding, but THIS ARTICLE in The Independent suggests that they're amateurs compared to run the UK. Ten of the most overspent major government projects Project: NHS national IT programme Budget £2.3bn Current cost £12.6bn Percentage overspent 450 per cent. Established in October 2002, under Alan Milburn, scheme to link 30,000 GPs in England to nearly 300 hospitals has been derided for huge costs and technical problems. Project: 2012 Olympics Budget £2.4bn Current cost £9.3bn Percentage overspent 289 per cent The euphoria that greeted the decision to award London the 2012 Games has largely given way to concerns over spiralling costs. Project: Astute Class submarine Budget £2.5bn Current cost £3.8bn Percentage overspent 48 per cent The order for three of next-generation nuclear fleet submarines for the Royal Navy was announced in 1997 and subsequently increased to four. Only one has yet arrived. Project: Type 45 destroyer Budget £5.4bn Current cost £6.4bn Percentage overspent 18 per cent Highly impressive replacements for the Type 42 class, but dogged by delays and cost overruns. Project: Nimrod MK4 Budget £2.8bn Current cost £3.6bn Percentage overspent 28 per cent A fixed-price order for 21 Nimrod 2000 aircraft was placed in 1996, with an in-service date of 2003. The project was reviewed in May 2006. Project: Ministry of Justice Libra case management system Budget £146m Current cost £487m Percentage overspent 234 per cent Contract to provide a IT system for magistrates' courts was awarded in 1998. MPs told it would be completed by October 2007 or, in a "worst-case scenario", March 2008. It wasn't. Project: Ministry of Justice's P-Nomis offender management system Budget £234m Current cost £513m Percentage overspent 119 per cent A National Audit Office analysis concluded that "the value for money achieved by the project was poor". Project: Pensions Transformation programme for DWP Budget £429m Current cost £598m Percentage overspent 39 per cent An NAO report subsequently criticised the delays and overspend. Project: Central payment system for the DWP Budget £90m Current cost £178m Percentage overspent 98 per cent Now expected to be delivered in December next year, five years after its planned completion date of October 2006. Project: A46 Improvement Budget £157m Current cost £220m Percentage overspent 40.1 per cent Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manxy Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 Some amazingly disturbing figures and somewhere along the line, there must be people who are accountable for this gross over spending of money, although I'm sure that the big bosses will find plenty of scapegoats to save their necks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Tatlock Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 That's life - vote NuShite Labour and it'll cost you £azillion. Vote tories to correct it and it'll cost you £gabillion. UK Governments are crap at project management. Why? They employ accountants to do it, instead of engineers - engineers are now rarer than £1million winning scratchcards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
manshimajin Posted January 10, 2010 Share Posted January 10, 2010 I can hear our Treasurer saying - the UK overspend and waste money even more than we do. Why is it that the public sector are so bad at managing money? It is only a few weeks ago that the UK MoD was announcing bonus payments to its staff - presumably bonuses come out of a different pot to overspends? TBF the PS in the UK has only wasted hundreds of millions and a few billions here and there - the wankers managed to lose trillions. At New Year Angela Knight the spokesperson for the Association of British Bankers was whingeing in the FT that the UK government's feeble (my word) attempts to rein in bankers' bonuses (supposedely £40 billion over next 2 years in UK) was going to "kill the UK banking sector". Now I thought that in fact it was the bankers themselves who had been trying rather successfully over the last 5 years to commit commercial suicide. Funny how different it must look from the perspective of the ABB once the UK government had rescued them. There are organsations that are smart with money and those that are woeful - sadly in both the public and private sectors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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