Part 65 · Module 11: Delivery Management

Incident: The end date held, the rollout squeezed

9 min read·13 Oct 2026

Module 11 · Incident file · About 35 minutes

What happened

Warnings came early (amber, uncertain) and grew into a red rating and a reset (red, failure); by 2019 the cost had risen £3.1bn and Airwave's switch-off was three years late.

The Emergency Services Network (ESN) is the UK government's chosen replacement for Airwave, the radio system that 107 police, fire and ambulance services in England, Scotland and Wales use to talk between control rooms and the field. On 10 May 2019 the National Audit Office (NAO) reported on its progress (NAO, "Progress delivering the Emergency Services Network", HC 2140, 10 May 2019). Everything in this section is from that report.

The Home Office awarded the main contracts in 2015, to EE, Motorola and KBR. It previously expected the emergency services to start using ESN in September 2017, so that Airwave could be replaced in December 2019. When the NAO first reported, in September 2016, ESN was "already between five and 10 months late", and the NAO concluded the Home Office was "underrating the high risk that ESN would be delayed". In February 2017 the Home Office stated it would be nine months late. The government's Infrastructure and Projects Authority later rated it red: "successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable". On 21 September 2018 the Home Office announced a "reset".

By 2019 the forecast cost was £9.3 billion, "£3.1 billion (49%)" more than in 2015, of which £1.4 billion was the cost of keeping Airwave running for longer. Airwave's switch-off moved to December 2022, three years late. The NAO's verdict: the programme "has represented poor value for money".

What happened

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