Disclosure demanded on cancelled fire control costs

Fire Brigades Union presses for transparency as termination agreement with Cassidian is stamped "commercially confidential"

The government has been urged to come clean over the cost of aborting the troubled Fire Control system after concluding it could not be brought in on time without unacceptable additional expenditure.

A Fire Brigades Union (FBU) spokesman said the union is calling for the disclosure of the amount wasted on the project at a time local brigades have been forced to cut back on equipment, machines, manpower and fire stations.

The demand followed a refusal by fire minister Bob Neill to disclose how much it has cost to terminate the agreement with main contractor Cassidian, claiming the information is "commercially confidential".

The proposal to centralise 42 control rooms in nine regional centres at a cost understood to be £350m was pushed by former local government minister Sadiq Khan.

Amid reports of prolonged difficulties and delays, it was understood the last centres would not have become operational until 2012 and there were fears of problems implementing the system in London in the run-up to the Olympics, with heightened danger of a terrorist incident.

Neill announced in a written Commons statement he had "reached agreement" with Cassidian (formerly EADS Defence and Security) to call a halt to what his announcement described as "a troubled project".

The statement said: "The Department and the contractor have now jointly concluded that the project requirements cannot be delivered to an acceptable timeframe."

Neill said that in June shortly after the general election the government triggered a requirement for the main IT system to be completed in three centres by mid-2011 and told Cassidian "no additional taxpayers' money could be invested in this project, nor would delivery of a system of reduced quality or functionality be acceptable".

After talks the "best outcome" was to terminate the agreement with immediate effect, he said, adding: "Cassidian and the Department for Communities and Local Government have reached an acceptable settlement over this although the details will remain commercially confidential."

FBU general secretary Matt Wrack said the decision was "long overdue", adding that staff in existing control rooms had been treated "appallingly".

The union is calling for overdue investment in existing centres. It believes the government is still saddled with ongoing costs of £35,000 a day for buildings required for the system.