How BIS got off lightly

The National Audit Office has a lot to say about what went wrong in Swindon as the research councils stumbled through the establishment of a facility to share their back office functions. For those who have attempted to pin down the numbers in this sticky case, the NAO report provides a long-awaited insight into where it all went wrong. But one sentence in the report stands out in particular.

“There is no evidence that the department, as sponsor of the councils, intervened when it became clear the project was likely to overspend.”