A running ledger of British government capital projects scrapped or written off since 2010. Inclusion requires a confirmed cost of £10m or more and a primary source.
£29.1bn
Written off across fourteen projects since 2010
That is £1,025 per UK household.
Based on 28.4 million households. Nominal figures, not inflation-adjusted.
The ledger below records fourteen projects. Every entry rests on a primary source: a report from the National Audit Office, a Public Accounts Committee inquiry, audited departmental accounts or a High Court judgment. Press releases and advocacy briefings do not qualify.
Inclusion is narrow. A project must have cost at least £10m, must have been scrapped or written off rather than simply delivered late and must have a figure that can be checked. Ordinary cost overruns and operational waste sit outside the scope. What remains is money that bought nothing usable.
Entries are added each quarter.
01
National Programme for IT (NPfIT)
£10bn
DHSC · Health IT · Dismantled 2011–13 · Strong
Launched in 2002 to digitise the NHS. Officially dismantled in September 2011. The Public Accounts Committee called it one of the worst contracting fiascos in the history of the public sector. The Lorenzo patient record sub-programme was meant to cover 220 trusts and reached 22 before being abandoned in 2020. One implementation failed to send 14,600 GP discharge summaries over ten months.
02
Pandemic PPE write-off
£9.9bn
DHSC · Health · Written off 2024 · Strong
The Department of Health and Social Care wrote off £9.9bn of the £13.6bn it spent on pandemic PPE, with unusable stock burnt to generate power. Storage of the surplus cost a further £990m.
03
Nimrod MRA4 reconnaissance aircraft
£4.0bn
MoD · Defence · Cancelled 2010 · Strong
Nine completed airframes were scrapped in the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review after years of delays and cost overruns. None flew an operational hour. The £4bn programme was broken up for metal.
04
HS2 Phase 2 (Northern leg)
£2.1bn
DfT · Transport · Cancelled 2023 · Strong
Rishi Sunak cancelled the Birmingham-to-Manchester leg in October 2023. £2.1bn has since been written off across two financial years, of which £592m went on land that will now never see a track. Closing Phase 2 will take three years and cost a further £100m.
05
Rwanda asylum scheme
£715m
Home Office · Immigration · Cancelled 2024 · Strong
Between 2022 and 2024 the government spent £715m on the scheme. Four people went to Rwanda voluntarily; nobody was forcibly removed. The incoming Labour government cancelled it in July 2024. The NAO estimated that at scale the cost per person removed would have reached roughly £200,000.
06
NHS Nightingale hospitals
£530m
NHS England · Health · Mothballed 2020–21 · Strong
Seven emergency hospitals were built in spring 2020 at a combined cost of £530m. The Birmingham site cost £66.4m and treated no patients. Most of the network was mothballed or repurposed by June 2020.
07
e-Borders programme
£525m
Home Office · Immigration IT · Terminated 2010 · Strong
The Home Office terminated its contract with Raytheon in July 2010. A 2014 arbitration tribunal ruled the termination was wrong and ordered the government to pay £150m in compensation plus £35m in legal costs. Combined with £340m already spent on the failed original programme, the direct cost of the failure reached £525m.
08
FireControl regional control centres
£469m
DCLG · Emergency services IT · Cancelled 2010 · Strong
The project was intended to replace 46 local fire control rooms with nine regional centres linked by new IT. It was terminated in December 2010 after seven years, with no IT system delivered. Eight of the nine purpose-built centres stood empty and continued to cost money to maintain.
09
Green Homes Grant voucher scheme
£314m
BEIS · Energy · Scrapped 2021 · Strong
The scheme was allocated £1.5bn but spent only £314m before being scrapped. It upgraded 47,500 homes against a target of 600,000. Administration alone cost £50.5m, or more than £1,000 per home. The NAO concluded that the scheme had been "set up to fail".
10
National Identity Cards scheme
£257m
Home Office · Immigration IT · Scrapped 2010 · Strong
The Labour government's Identity Cards scheme was scrapped by the incoming coalition in 2010 after £257m had been spent on implementation. Around 15,000 cards had been issued. All were invalidated in January 2011. Cardholders who had paid £30 received no refund.
11
PPE Medpro unusable gowns
£122m
DHSC · Health · Unpaid court order 2025 · Strong
The High Court ordered PPE Medpro to repay £122m on 1 October 2025 for gowns that failed sterility checks on arrival. The deadline was missed. With interest, the debt is now about £145m. The company is being wound up.
12
Sinfin waste treatment plant
£94m
Derbyshire councils · Waste · Terminated 2019 · Strong
Derbyshire County Council and Derby City Council terminated the contract in August 2019, after the plant failed its commissioning tests and generated what the councils described as excessive odours. A £93.5m settlement with the developer was agreed in July 2023. The plant still does not process any waste.
DfT / TfL · Transport · Scrapped 2017 · Strong
A Thomas Heatherwick-designed crossing of the Thames, backed by Boris Johnson and Joanna Lumley. £43m of public money was spent before the project was scrapped in August 2017, without construction ever beginning. Heatherwick's studio was paid £2.76m for the design.
14
Carillion PFI termination at Royal Liverpool
£42m
DHSC · Health · Termination payment 2018 · Strong
The Department of Health paid £42m to exit the Carillion PFI contract at Royal Liverpool Hospital after the contractor collapsed in January 2018. The National Audit Office later concluded that, had the department waited, it might not have needed to pay anything at all. The estimated cost of finishing the hospital rose from £117m to £293m once the true state of the building became apparent.
Health accounts for 71% of the list by value, pulled up by NPfIT and the pandemic PPE write-off. The rules do not single out health.
Methodology
Inclusion rules. An entry qualifies if a UK government department or public body spent at least £10 million on a capital project, programme or procurement since January 2010, and the money was subsequently scrapped, written off or spent on an asset that was unusable or never used as intended.
Sources. Every entry must cite at least one of: a National Audit Office report, a Public Accounts Committee inquiry, departmental audited accounts, a High Court judgment, or an established broadsheet or trade press investigation. Advocacy briefings and press releases do not qualify as sole sources.
Confidence. All fourteen entries are rated Strong, meaning the figure is corroborated across two or more independent primary sources. Entries with disputed headline figures or single-source claims are held back.
Out of scope. Ordinary cost overruns, unfinished projects still in delivery, operational waste such as consultancy spend, storage costs for usable assets and projects below the £10m floor. The companion list handles absurdities below that threshold, or projects still technically in delivery such as the Ajax armoured vehicle programme and the Emergency Services Network.
What is missing. This list is short by design. Several candidates did not make the cut because the headline figure was disputed, the source was advocacy-only or the project is still in delivery. The Bowman radio system and the Type 45 destroyer engine rebuild are both well-documented but could not be pinned to a primary NAO figure at launch.
Update cadence. The Scrap Heap is refreshed quarterly. The next update is scheduled for July 2026.