According to its 2017 report, in September 2016, the GMPP comprised 143 major projects representing £455.5bn in expenditure across 17 government departments.

Of these, just four, worth a combined £2.4bn (0.5%), were rated red, signifying that successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable.

None of these are HMRC projects, but both Making Tax Digital for business and the moves to consolidate HMRC offices into regional hubs are among a total of 34 projects graded as amber/red. This category refers to projects where successful delivery is in doubt, ‘with major risks or issues apparent in a number of key areas’.

Making Tax Digital for businesses, one of six major IT projects underway at HMRC valued at a total £9.3bn budget, is flagged amber/red in the annual report. This means that ‘successful delivery of the project is in doubt, with major risks or issues apparent in a number of key areas. Urgent action is needed to address these problems and/or assess whether resolution is feasible’.

In the case of HMRC’s ‘building a future location’ project, costed at over £2bn, the IPA analysis says the programme is large with ‘a very challenging schedule’ involving the creation of 13 regional centres and the migration of 40,000 staff over five years. 

In 2016/17 Q2, following a re-baselining of cost, schedule and benefits reflecting changes to initial forecasts, understated legacy accommodation running costs of some £26m were identified.  

The analysis notes that since then, legacy accommodation running costs have been reviewed in depth to provide much greater confidence in the figures. In addition investment cost assumptions have been refined leading to an improved understanding of underpinning costs and some reductions in investment costs.

The report states: ‘As a result of this work, the programme has a much better understanding of costs as it progresses towards approvals.

‘Work is in hand to assess the impact of the revised schedule on business outputs and our people. ‘Since September a significant amount of risk mitigation and cost reduction work has been undertaken to mitigate major programme risks and to address affordability concerns.’

In the case of Making Tax Digital for business, the IPA analysis says its warning rating reflects’ a number of the programme's key performance indicators and constituent projects together with: the overall number and complex dependencies of the constituent parts; challenges in agreeing a design which meets both customer needs and legal requirements effectively; and the scale of the challenge in managing stakeholder reactions and successfully landing the required primary legislation in Finance Bill  2017.’

Making Tax Digital for individuals is given an amber rating and viewed as a lower risk. The Columbus project to manage the safe exit of HMRC's Aspire IT contract has an amber/green rating. In Parliament this week Mel Stride, financial secretary to the Treasury, provided a written statement that confirmed this has concluded.

The statement said: ‘HMRC has successfully exited the Aspire IT contract, which ended on 30 June 2017. HMRC is now working with a diverse range of suppliers to deliver a modern, agile IT function that supports its commitment to create a tax authority fit for the future. Its ground-breaking IT commercial model is on target to save around £200m a year by 2020-21, on a like-for-like basis.’

The IPA figures show that over 60% of all the GMPP by whole-life cost were rated amber or better.

The bulk of the projects are in infrastructure and construction (37 projects worth £222.5bn), followed by military capability (27 projects worth £143.3bn), government transformation and service delivery (40 projects worth £71.1bn), and ICT (39 projects £18.6bn).

The Infrastructure and Projects Authority Annual Report on Major Projects 2016-17 is here.

Mel Stride’s written answer about the Aspire project is here.