Recommendation 2

The Department’s failure to deliver ESN creates a significant cost for the emergency services who must pay to fund ESN and to maintain Airwave for longer. Delays have meant the Department itself has actually spent less than it expected on ESN, but the ultimate users of ESN have had to pay more. The emergency services must contribute, alongside funding from the Department, the Department of Health & Social Care and the Scottish and Welsh governments, to the cost of both ESN and Airwave, and will get no benefit from ESN until Airwave is turned off. Emergency services need to decide how to replace ageing Airwave devices and control rooms, but do not have enough information to know when to do this, because the Department has no timetable for ESN. Emergency services are facing financial pressures and have had to temporarily disband teams who will work on the transition to ESN, risking the loss of vital skills. The Department has not created any specific mechanism for helping emergency services bear the extra costs created by failing to deliver ESN. The CMA has proposed a charge control on Airwave which, once implemented, will make Airwave less expensive to run. But Airwave will still require investment to replace potentially obsolescent infrastructure and technology, and to ensure it keeps operating at its current good performance level. The Department does not yet understand the extent of these costs. Recommendation 2: As part of the new ESN business case, the Department should explore with users how savings created by the CMA imposing a charge control on Airwave can be used to help fund transition activities and new Airwave devices as well as maintaining Airwave. 6 The Emergency Services Network