The most expensive website

The £105m website – The Most Expensive Website Ever?

Now that’s a project, right? Wouldn’t mind getting your hands on that little beauty I bet! £105 million for a website build…sounds impossible doesn’t it? Well, it’s not and the Cabinet Office are up in arms about it. In an article covered by the BBC, the website businesslink.gov.uk cost exactly that over a 3 year period.

Business Link is an official government website that offers free business advice and support service, available online and local advisers. In fact, Online Design have had their support in the past – though I would have preferred the support to the tune of a £105 million contract for their website!! Judging by the comments on the article, its a bone of contention but the fact remains that £105 million on a website is an awful lot of money especially when the contractor – Serco, who have also just announced winning a £415 million project to build a new Belmarsh Prison, sub-contracted the project back out to BT. It’s good to talk!

The COI report has some detail on the £105 million invoice – £6.2m on strategy and planning, £4.4m on design and build, £4.7m on hosting and infrastructure, £15.3m on content provision and £4.5m on testing and evaluation. But the kicker is that cost is repeated every year. How the hell does that work??!! Incidentally, its not the most expensive website. The NHS Choices site comes in at a cool £21m – but it does get around million unique visit a month compared to the Business Link site that only attract around a million.