INFORMATION technology companies must just love working for this Government.

A public sector contract seems to be a licence to print money.

Problems with the installation of new computer systems lie at the heart of so many catastrophic cost over-runs, in the NHS, the police and the armed forces. Now it appears the fire service has succumbed to the disease.

The costs of running the highly- controversial regional fire control centres for the North- East and Yorkshire are higher than expected, so much so that, in fact, they will cost more to run than the multiple centre control rooms they will replace.

That surely defeats the object of the re-organisation in the first place.

When regional control rooms for the fire service were mooted, we were told the efficiencies would be ploughed into frontline services. Worries about staff based many miles from the areas where firefighters were being deployed and not having sufficiently detailed local knowledge were brushed aside in the name of modernisation and efficiency.

Those fears still persist – especially as the solution was to be technological – and the costs are going through the roof. There will be no efficiencies. Indeed, the new Yorkshire control centre at Wakefield will cost £602,000 more a year to run than the four local control rooms, one in Northallerton, it replaces.

Nationally, the figures are even more scary. The cost of programme across England and Wales is £1.4bn, up from £1bn.

Incredibly, a statement from the Department for Communities and Local Government suggests that the increase is due to “certainty about costs following the award of the IT contract and signing of the lease agreements”.

One way of interpreting thus is that “some clever software types and commercial estate agents have seen us (the Government) coming and taken us to the cleaners”.

A less cynical view is that Government projects of this scale and nature inevitably over-run and we should not be surprised.

We shall certainly not be comforted by the announcement by the project’s local leader that all the extra costs will be met by central government. Whichever tier of government picks up the bill for another sorry tale of mismanagement, we will all be the poorer.