Desertcreat college: NI loses £53m over stalled training facility

Artist's impression of part of the planned college

Northern Ireland has lost £53m of public money that had been earmarked for a new joint training college for the police, fire and prison services.

The college was supposed to be built at Desertcreat, County Tyrone by 2008, but was dogged by problems and delays.

A Stormont committee has now been told the Treasury has withdrawn the funding.

In March, the BBC reported two Stormont departments had accepted it was no longer economically viable, marking the final nail in the coffin for the plan.

'Messed up'

The project was first announced in 2004 and more than £12m has already been spent buying the site and on design fees.

SDLP MLA Patsy McGlone has been involved in talks about the proposed college for more than 15 years, first as a Cookstown councillor and then in his current role as a member of Stormont's Justice Committee.

He told BBC Radio Ulster's Evening Extra programme that the construction project had suffered a "death by 1,000 cuts".

"It has been messed up, it has gone back and forward to the Policing Board," Mr McGlone said.

He said the public were frustrated by the "sheer incompetence that has been shown from beginning to end with this project".

"Today it emerged, following questions from myself at the Justice Committee, that the £53m that had been committed by Westminster to this project is now gone, no longer available for the project."

SDLP MLA Patsy McGlone told Evening Extra that "sheer incompetence" had been shown since the project was first announced 11 years ago

The SDLP MLA said there was huge disappointment in the Cookstown area over the failure to build the college.

'Fed up'

"Hopes were riding high on this project to deliver for construction, to deliver for local jobs, local services and the domino effect that it was going to have on the local economy for retailers, for housing, all those sorts of things. And people, by this stage, are utterly fed up."

Mr McGlone said that although there was talk of a scaled-down version of the training college, the lost of £53m was a major setback to any future plan.

Justice Minister David Ford was not available for interview but a spokesperson at the Department of Justice said the college "remains a Programme for Government commitment".

"The Executive allocated £53m to the project in the 2015-16 budget but this was conditional on access to End-Year Flexibility (EYF) from HM Treasury," they said.

"All such EYF commitments have ceased and it will be a matter for Department of Finance and Personnel to engage with HM Treasury to seek to deploy the Northern Ireland contribution elsewhere in 2015-16 if possible."