Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government when the design and build stages of the Emergency Services Network will conclude; and what estimate they have made of the cost of that project by the end of those stages.

The design and build phase of ESN is broken down into three phases:

1. Design and build of the “Prime” product which brings together the push-to-talk application on a range of devices (including handheld, vehicles and aircraft) utilising the prioritised EE network. This is due to complete in April 2021 and is forecast to cost £442m. This represents the majority of the supplier implementation and programme resource costs that the programme will incur.
2. The addition of masts to EE’s core network to provide the required network coverage for ESN. It is planned that this activity and subsequent network optimisation will be completed during 2021. Costs for this work will be paid via a monthly service charge which will reduce at the start of 2022 from c.£10m per month to c.£6m per month.
3. Delivery of additional coverage e.g. in remote areas of the country and the London Underground. This will complete in parallel with national deployment of the ESN and is forecast to cost £334m.

Following construction of the Emergency Services Network, in addition to the core operating costs of the programme of c £170m p.a., Emergency Services will need to buy ESN compatible devices and pay a monthly cost for connection, data and voice usage. (It is important to note that there is no cost for calls within ESN network.) Device pricing and call charges are commercially sensitive and subject to ongoing commercial negotiation.