UK officials acknowledge ESN risks, hope to complete public-safety broadband project by 2030

Already several years behind schedule, the Emergency Services Network (ESN) public-safety broadband initiative remains the UK Home Office’s riskiest project—one that may not be complete until the end of 2029 and likely will not provide a financial payback until the 2040s, UK officials told a Parliament oversight committee.

Earlier this year, the UK Home Office announced that Motorola Solutions formally would exit the ESN project as the Lot 2 vendor—the entity tasked with delivering key software and services, including push-to-talk technology that would replace the Airwave TETRA system. UK Home Office officials told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) during a March 27 hearing that they hope to complete a new Lot 2 procurement this year and present a new ESN business plan during the first quarter of 2024.

ESN Programme Director John Black said the current December 2026 target date for UK first responders to switch all mission-critical communications from the Airwave TETRA system to ESN—allowing Airwave to be shut down—is “very unlikely to be met.” As a result, a third extension of Airwave services is expected to be needed through at least the end of decade, according to Home Office officials and multiple filings to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) that is investigating the terms of Airwave contract extensions beginning in 2020.

Black said the new Lot 2 procurement will be released “within the next couple of months. Home Office officials “are confident [the new Lot 2 vendor] will be a consortium,” because the capabilities needed to complete the Lot 2 work is so varied that it is doubtful that any single company could fill the role.

Despite this, Black said he believes the Lot 2 procurement will attract multiple bidders.

“At the moment, we have talked to a significant number of candidate organizations, and there are a sufficient [number] showing active interest,” Black said. “I am confident we will get a good competition. We will have certainty on that when we get to the next stage of the process in a few months.”

Simon Parr, the senior responsible officer for ESN, said the Home Office is engaged in considerable public-safety outreach about the ESN, noting that more than 300,000 users and more than 40,000 vehicles will need to be outfitted with appropriate broadband devices. Despite this logistical challenge that is “eye-wateringly complex,” Parr offered a scenario in which UK public-safety agencies could begin using the public-safety broadband network for data communications as early as 2025.

“We are starting to do that logistical planning now, even though we do not plan to be rolling out much before the middle or end part of 2025, when I hope—I will emphasize the word “hope”—if the procurements go right, the ESN network will be live for data,” Parr said.

“Now, I am not giving that as a promise, because we have to go through the procurements. But I intend, if it is humanly possible, to have that network live and being used for data at least initially by fire and ambulance, which are more keen than the police [to use broadband] as we go on that journey.”

Parr said the Home Office plans to complete a revised ESN business case during the first quarter of 2024, assuming the Lot 2 procurement is completed as planned.

“We would hope to do that [present the new business case] by the end of this financial year, so that would be in the first quarter,” Parr said. “It is dependent on us completing the procurements we are going through, because we obviously need to negotiate prices and get to best and final offers from the supplier.”

PAC members have demonstrated considerable interest in the business case of the ESN for much of the past decade, in large part because a key promise of the ESN proposal was that the public-safety broadband network would be significantly less costly than the expensive Airwave TETRA system. Initially, Home Office officials said that the transition from Airwave to ESN would begin in 2016 and be completed by the time the first Airwave contract expired at the end of 2019.

Instead, UK taxpayers have paid more than 2 billion pounds ($2.5 billion) for the ESN, which has no operational users today and likely will not provide even public-safety data communications until at least 2025. In addition, the Home Office paid Motorola Solutions for more than three years to maintain the Airwave TETRA system and likely will need to do so for at least another six years—albeit at a potentially much lower rate, if the CMA’s price-control ruling that would “claw back” 1.1 billion pounds withstands expected legal challenges from Motorola Solutions.

PAC member Geoffrey Clifton-Brown expressed his frustration with the ESN situation during the hearing.

“You have spent £2 billion on ESN. It started off life at £240 million,” Clifton-Brown said. “I just think that there is an element of complacency about this. And I really do not want to be here in another six months’ or a year’s time going around exactly the same course as we are now. We are going around exactly the same course that we have been around several times before.”

Matthew Rycroft, permanent home secretary at the Home Office, repeatedly stated that complacency regarding the ESN is not a problem within the Home Office—“it would be weird if there were to be any complacency,” referencing the history of the project.

However, Rycroft acknowledged the risks associated with the ESN initiative, which is referenced in the UK government by the color red.

“This is the biggest and hardest of all of the Home Office’s programs, and we have a portfolio that is stuffed full of very difficult programs,” Rycroft said. “This is the reddest of them all, and that is why it gets such significant attention from myself, from ministers and from the excellent team around me.”

Rycroft said that ESN will save UK taxpayers about £200 million ($250 million) per year when it replaces the Airwave system, but Clifton-Brown noted that such a savings rate means it will take at least 10 years to pay back the £2 billion already spent on ESN.

Rycroft agreed, noting that another incentive for completing ESN is that some industry experts project that Airwave’s TETRA technology will reach its end of life between 2030 and 2035.

“You [Clifton-Brown] are absolutely right; this [ESN] is a very long-term program,” Rycroft said. “It will be with us into the 2040s, as a minimum. We will be getting payback into the 2040s, probably significantly longer than that.

“This is a very long-term program, but we are absolutely determined to crack on and get the benefit from it as quickly as we can and certainly before the risk of Airwave entering the end-of-life phase starts to increase.

PAC Chair Meg Hillier agreed that the ESN project is necessary, but she also expressed considerable frustration with the program, which has little tangible benefit to show for several years of time, effort and taxpayer funding.

“There is an inevitability, because the old system is getting out of date, and it will eventually have to be switched off. Something has to replace it,” Hillier said. “We keep seeing no real progress in rolling the kit out to people on the ground. No force, ambulance service or fire service has taken it on yet. It is well behind the deadlines that were originally set. Money is being spent on something that is just not being delivered.”

Rycroft said there has been progress to achieving the goals of the ESN and said he believes it will be done by the end of the decade.

“We are over halfway to having all of the technical delivery in place for the mass transition, which needs to happen before the TETRA technology, on which the Airwave system is based, becomes obsolete,” Rycroft said. “We think the beginning of that phase will be on a 2030-to-2035 timescale.

“We have had delays to this program—which I absolutely accept—but we remain on track for turning Airwave off before 2030, which is when the risk would begin to increase if we were unable to do that. We are absolutely focused on ensuring that we are ready by 2030.”