To ask the Minister of Health to detail (i) what overrun costs have occurred on his Department’s IT projects since the 2022-23 financial year; and (ii) what investigations there have been into these overruns.

Since the 2022–2023 financial year, cost overruns have been incurred in two of my Department’s major IT programmes due to changes in approval processes; the NIDIS programme, which saw an uplift of £3.461 million and the Encompass programme, which experienced an increase of £24.9 million.

Approval changes were investigated and managed through a standard business case addendum process to ensure continued alignment with the NICS Five Case Model.

NIDIS

The Full Business Case for NIDIS was approved in November 2020 with an estimated cost of £12.235 million. A revised approval was issued in November 2024 to reflect timeline adjustments, increasing the estimated cost to £15.716 million, an uplift of £3.461 million.

For NIDIS, the approval uplift was managed through a formal revision process, endorsed by both the Department of Health and the Department of Finance, ensuring continued compliance with the +10% tolerance threshold.

The encompass Programme

The full business base for encompass was approved in July 2020 with an estimated cost of £330.9 million. An addendum to the business case was subsequently approved in December 2023, revising the cost to £355.8 million, an increase of £24.9 million.

While the original case for encompass remained unchanged, a business case addendum was submitted to the Department in 2022 and subsequently approved. This was prompted by recruitment challenges within the regional encompass team, the impacts of COVID-19, greater clarity around the underlying digital infrastructure, and the need for enhanced clinical and professional support at Trust level.