The main Scrap Heap is ranked by amount. This list is ranked by the stupidity of the cause.
Some British failures do not need a large number to be memorable. A ferry with the windows painted on the hull. A heating subsidy that paid recipients more to burn fuel than the fuel cost. A fridge without an alarm. A destroyer that could not cope with warm water. Each of the twelve cases below is drawn from the same class of sources the main list requires: inquiries, audits, court filings, trade-press investigations. Advocacy briefings and press releases do not qualify.
Several entries fall below the £10m floor that governs the main Scrap Heap. Others concern projects that were eventually delivered late, which disqualifies them from "scrapped or written off". What unites them is the cause of the failure rather than its size.
01
Ferguson Marine: painted-on windows
£360m+
Scottish Government / CMAL · Transport · 2017–2025
Nicola Sturgeon launched a new ferry at the Ferguson shipyard in 2017. Somebody had drawn the windows on the hull in felt-tip because the ship was not finished.
Ferguson Marine's contract to build two CalMac ferries, MV Glen Sannox and MV Glen Rosa, was priced at £97m. At the Glen Sannox launch ceremony in November 2017, attended by the then First Minister, the windows on the bridge were painted on and the funnels temporarily fixed in place, because the vessel was nowhere near complete. The PR event cost taxpayers an estimated £47,500. The two ferries entered service eight years late at a cost of more than £460m; Ferguson Marine was nationalised in 2019. MV Glen Sannox finally carried paying passengers in January 2025.
02
Northern Ireland Renewable Heat Incentive
~£490m
DETI (Northern Ireland) · Energy · 2012–2020
A green-heating subsidy that paid recipients £1.60 for every £1 they spent on fuel. Unsurprisingly, claimants ran biomass boilers around the clock in empty sheds.
The Renewable Heat Incentive, launched in 2012 under the then Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster, was designed to encourage households and businesses to switch to renewable heating. The tariff was set above the cost of the fuel, with no cost cap. Recipients could profit simply by running wood-pellet boilers continuously, and many did so in empty buildings. The scheme was closed to new applicants in 2016 after the scale of the over-claim became clear. Public liability was estimated at nearly £500m. The scandal brought down the Northern Ireland Executive in 2017. A 656-page public inquiry by Sir Patrick Coghlin reported in March 2020.
03
Shrewsbury & Telford: the fridge door
£25k
SaTH NHS Trust · Health · 2026
£25,000-worth of medicine binned because a pharmacy fridge had been left ajar, and had no alarm to say so.
The pharmacy fridge at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust had no alarm to warn staff when it was left open. Someone left it open. Every drug inside had to be written off, at a cost of £25,000. The trust's board papers subsequently noted that the cost of "pharmacy items, wastage and write-offs remained a concern". The incident was reported in March 2026.
04
Edinburgh Sick Kids: the spreadsheet
£16m
NHS Lothian · Health · 2019
A hospital opening delayed by two years after a copy-paste error in a ventilation spreadsheet.
Days before the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People was due to open in July 2019, critical care ventilation was found to be inadequate. An NHS Lothian audit by Grant Thornton traced the fault to a 2012 spreadsheet in which the generic four-bed ward air-flow specification had been copied across into the critical care rooms. Three firms bid on the contract; one spotted the error and submitted a corrected version, which the evaluators failed to notice. The hospital eventually opened in March 2021. The delay is reported to have cost almost £17m.
05
Royal London Hospital: forgot the sprinklers
£24m
Barts Health NHS Trust · Health · 2022
Six new wards and space for 155 intensive care beds, mothballed because the contractors never installed fire sprinklers.
Barts Health added six new wards at the Royal London during the pandemic at a cost of £24m, providing space for 155 intensive care beds. None of it has treated a patient since May 2022: the contractors did not install fire sprinklers, and the wards cannot be used until the problem is remediated. HSJ reported the story in January 2023; no national paper followed it up.
06
Cambridgeshire guided busway
£68m extra
Cambridgeshire County Council · Transport · 2011–13
The council sued its contractor £55m for late delivery. The council lost, and ended up paying the contractor an additional £0.8m on top of the original fee.
Cambridgeshire County Council launched a £54.7m legal claim against Bam Nuttall, arguing that the contractor had delivered the guided busway two years late. Bam Nuttall counter-claimed for £43m. In August 2013 the council settled out of court and paid Bam Nuttall £84.7m, slightly above the original £83.9m contract fee. With legal and other charges, the total cost of the scheme rose to £152m. The council paid the contractor it had accused of breach of contract.
07
Bristol Underground feasibility studies
£18m+
Bristol City Council / WECA · Transport · 2017–
£18m of feasibility studies into an underground system for a city whose geology has defeated every previous attempt.
Bristol has commissioned a £50,000 feasibility study, a £3m geological survey and a £15m full design study into a part-underground mass transit system. A review by the consultancy WSP found that an underground line would cost between £15.5bn and £18.3bn, roughly ten times the price of an overground alternative. Early design reports are said to have placed one of the proposed central stations close to the route of the river Frome. The studies continue; no tunnel has yet been dug.
08
Type 45 destroyer engines
£1.5bn
MoD · Defence · Rebuilt from 2017
£1bn-a-hull destroyers whose Rolls-Royce engines could not cope with the warm waters of the Persian Gulf, which is where the Royal Navy wished to sail them.
The Royal Navy's six Type 45 Daring-class destroyers were designed around Rolls-Royce WR-21 intercooler-recuperator engines. In service the engines could not cope with the higher sea temperatures of the Persian Gulf and suffered catastrophic propulsion failures. The entire fleet was withdrawn in turn for a mid-life engine rebuild under Project Napier, at a cost of roughly £1.5bn.
09
Ajax armoured vehicle programme
£5.5bn
MoD · Defence · 2010–
A £5.5bn armoured fighting vehicle so noisy that the soldiers testing it suffered hearing damage and vibration injuries.
The Ajax programme, a £5.5bn firm-priced contract with General Dynamics for 589 vehicles, was due to enter service in 2017. Noise and vibration problems emerged during trials and caused documented hearing damage and musculoskeletal injuries to testing crews; the MoD paused payments in December 2020 and resumed them only in March 2023. The first squadron reached initial operating capability in November 2025, eight years behind schedule. Unit costs are now around £10m per vehicle.
10
G4S Olympics security contract
£88m
G4S / Home Office · Security · 2012
Two weeks before the opening ceremony, G4S admitted it could not produce half the guards it had promised. The British army stepped in.
G4S had signed a £284m contract to provide 10,400 guards for the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. Two weeks before the opening ceremony it admitted that only about 4,000 guards were trained and available. The Ministry of Defence sent 3,500 extra soldiers to fill the gap, on top of those already assigned. G4S refunded £70m in management fees and booked an £88m loss on the contract.
11
Emergency Services Network
£2.0bn+
Home Office · Communications · 2015–
£2bn spent on a replacement for the Airwave radio; seven years past its original deadline, and nothing working yet.
ESN was meant to replace the TETRA-based Airwave network used by police, fire and ambulance services by 2020. By March 2023 the Home Office had spent just under £2bn on the new system and a further £2.9bn on keeping Airwave running as the replacement slipped, before Motorola's involvement ended early. The target for full operation has moved to the early 2030s, and police forces expect to spend another £25m on Airwave devices by 2026 to cover the gap.
12
Suffolk NHS taxis
£2.3m
West Suffolk & ESNEFT · Health · 2018–2024
Two neighbouring NHS trusts spent £2.3m on taxis in six years, one of them £289,454 in a single year.
West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust spent £1,061,834 on taxis between 2018 and 2024, across 13,770 journeys. Its neighbour, East Suffolk and North Essex, spent a further £1,262,885 between 2018/19 and 2023/24, of which £289,454 came in 2023/24 alone. Both trusts cite staff transfers between sites, pathology samples and patient belongings as the main reasons. The figures were obtained by the East Anglian Daily Times from its own Freedom of Information request.
Methodology
Each entry cites a primary source or a recognised investigation: a National Audit Office report, a public inquiry, a parliamentary committee, audited accounts, a court judgment or an established trade or regional press investigation. Stories sourced only to advocacy press releases or single tabloid reports are excluded.
This is a short list, not a complete one. More entries will be added alongside the quarterly Scrap Heap refresh.