Taxpayers' £2.2m rent fee on failed fire centre

Taxpayers will be paying rent of up to £2.2 million a year on a failed fire control centre in Wolverhampton for the next 20 years, it was revealed today.

The building is being sold as an investment opportunity thanks to the guaranteed rent from the government, which it has to pay even though no-one is using it.

Marketing documents reveal that the current £1.4m-a-year rent will go up automatically by 2.5 per cent every five years and by 2027 will cost the government £2.2m a year.

By the end of the lease it will have cost taxpayers more than £48m in rent alone because the government is tied into a lease for the control centre for another 20 years. That does not include the £10m cost to taxpayers to build it.

Fire minister Bob Neill today said the government was attempting to recoup some of the money by selling the lease. He said he was "picking up the pieces from Labour's mess".

The building on Wolverhampton Business Park was meant to merge the control rooms of fire services for the West Midlands, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire and Hereford and Worcester.

It was one of nine regional control centres set up by former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott in 2004. But the project was scrapped in 2010 after costs for completing the centres soared from £120m to £635m.

The Wolverhampton site has never been occupied but has round the clock security and lighting.

It is on the market with property agents Jones Lang LaSalle, which wants around £107m for five centres nationwide.

The centres for sale were owned by Control Centre General Partner Ltd, which has gone into receivership.