Question

To ask the hon. Member for Broxbourne, representing the House of Commons Commission, what the estimated cost is of the wi-fi upgrades being made across the Parliamentary estate as of 14 July 2023.

The House service approved the business case for a project to significantly improve Wi-Fi services across the estate in December 2022.

The Wi-Fi project will replace end-of-life hardware and upgrade services, to provide a seamless, simpler and better managed user experience for Members and staff, particularly for personal mobile devices in the form of a new Members and Staff Wi-Fi service and Guest Wi-Fi replacement for Internet Direct. This is supported by additional security and roaming service improvements, while also reducing operational overheads. Cost efficiencies are being gained by delivering this work alongside the Emergency Services Network project.

Improvements will take place across the Parliamentary Estate, prioritising Member facing areas and key areas of procedural and parliamentary business.

A breakdown of the costs per building is listed in the table below:

While Parlimentary Digital Service (PDS) are actively managing WI-FI provisions for all parliamentary buildings, any buildings not listed in the table above do not require the same interventions and as such are outside of the scope of this main Wi-Fi Project, with any issues tackled on a case-by-case basis.

The estimated cost including the whole life cost of the Wi-Fi upgrades being made across the Parliamentary estate by the Network and Wireless Project as of 14 July 2023 is listed in the table attached.

To date the project spend is £4.8m in project delivery (including some PDS costs from FY23/24), operational costs and depreciation. Risk and optimism bias costs are not included as they have not been spent.