For 18 years, government has been considering how to replace its high-containment laboratories in Porton Down, Wiltshire and Colindale, North London, which form part of the UK’s essential health security infrastructure. The majority of the facilities at Porton Down are now more than 55 years old, and replacing the high-containment laboratories is becoming an increasingly urgent issue.

In 2015, the Treasury approved Public Health England’s (PHE) outline business case for a new £530 million national integrated hub for public health science in Harlow. Funding for this programme was to be used to purchase and adapt a site in Harlow then owned by GlaxoSmithKline, and to relocate high-containment laboratories and workforce from sites in Porton Down and Colindale. The Department of Health authorised the purchase of the site for £30 million in 2017.

Yet, according to the National Audit Office (NAO) report, there has been little progress since, despite the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and its predecessors spending just over £400 million on the programme up to the end of October 2023 – around 75 per cent of the initial £530 million cost estimate. On top of the £30 million spent on the site, these costs have largely centred on design, revenue, project/programme support and management, and construction.

By 2023, the cost estimate had risen to £3.2 billion – £2.7 billion (or over 500 per cent) more than the approximation in the 2014-2015 outline business case. Contributing factors to this increase include changes to the scope of the programme, timetable delays and inflation.

The programme is now at an impasse after the UKHSA concluded in 2023 that the Harlow hub cannot be built within the £2 billion that the Treasury has indicated it’s willing to fund and that the Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC) wants to commit to. The UKHSA has been asked to explore remaining in Porton Down as an alternative but has consistently assessed Harlow as the best value-for-money option for consolidating and streamlining multiple sites.

The long-standing uncertainty surrounding the preferred location for the programme led the UKHSA to suspend all its main construction suppliers in 2022 at a cost of more than £2 million, after the DHSC reprioritised funding away from the programme, in agreement with the UKHSA and the Treasury. The agency has not been in a position to remobilise its suppliers, meaning that only minimal enabling work has taken place at the Harlow site since 2022.

The UKHSA’s latest assessment is that if the programme remains in Harlow, it will become fully operational in 2036 at the earliest. This is 15 years later than the timeline drawn up by PHE in its 2014-2015 outline business case.

Commenting on the situation, Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “In 2006, government determined that replacing and modernising its high-containment laboratories was critically important to ensure the UK has the capabilities to identify, study and respond to the most dangerous pathogens in the world.

“In the 18 years since, it has made very little progress at significant cost. Unrealistic cost estimates, uncertainty over scope and location, and escalating forecast costs have undermined both the UK’s future resilience to public health emergencies and value for money. UKHSA, DHSC and the Treasury must act decisively to agree a way forward for the programme and avoid further delays and cost increases in replacing this essential health security infrastructure.”

The full report, ‘Investigation into the UKHSA’s health security campus programme’, can be viewed here.