Progress delivering the Emergency Services Network

The Home Office needs to test its overall programme plan, to determine whether the new schedule for launching ESN and shutting down Airwave is achievable. It should prepare a comprehensive plan as soon as possible, covering all key elements of this complex programme, to ensure it develops realistic and tested assumptions about the time required for each element and the dependencies between them. The plan should be used to establish whether the Home Office can achieve the December 2022 date for switching off Airwave. It should be appraised by the Home Office’s new supplier of “programme advisory and delivery services”, expected to be appointed in mid-2019, and should be agreed by ESN’s sponsors, users and suppliers.

The Home Office needs to decide how the vital work to integrate all the ESN technology will be carried out. It should clearly set out whether this technical integration is part of the new contract for “programme advisory and delivery services” and if not, whether the programme team can do the technical integration itself or needs additional technical support.