The BBC’s hopes of dragging EastEnders out of the 1980s have been dealt a blow after plans for a new set for the BBC1 soap costing at least £15m were delayed by more than two years.
It is one of three of the BBC’s most strategically important and high-risk projects to have been delayed by two years or more.
One of them, a business systems and software project called Smart, saw its costs increase from £39m to £56m. IT project Aurora was also delayed by two years.
The delays were revealed in a National Audit Office (NAO) report on eight BBC projects costing a total of £885m that are estimated to generate savings of £1.9bn.
The figures do not include the new EastEnders set because contracts are subject to ongoing negotiations.
Five of the eight projects suffered delays including a new BBC Wales HQ in Cardiff which is 13 months behind its original target date and will now be completed in November 2019.
Codenamed project E20, the BBC announced plans two years ago to move EastEnders to a new set at the corporation’s Elstree studios in north London.
The soap has been filming on the same site since it began in 1985. The new set would be 20% bigger, enabling “greater editorial ambition and improved working conditions” with a new Queen Vic and reports that it would also include the programme’s first mosque.
The NAO report said the BBC recognised there were “significant issues already requiring management attention” which were “resolvable if addressed promptly”.
The corporation declined to say how much the new set would cost but a tender document said it would be “in excess of £15m”.
Expected to be completed by August 2018, it will not now not be completed until October 2020. The main set will be ready by May 2019.
The NAO report, published on Tuesday, followed the catastrophic failure of another big-money BBC project, the Digital Media Initiative (DMI), which was scrapped three years ago at a cost of £100m.
The NAO concluded that the BBC had improved oversight of its portfolio of critical projects following the “serious shortcomings” of DMI.
But it said there were still issues that needed to be addressed including the need to define performance and expected benefits “from the start”.
Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said: “The BBC has learned from our report on the failure of DMI and taken a number of steps to strengthen its oversight of critical projects.
“But further concerted action is needed. The BBC needs to do more to manage its critical projects as a coherent portfolio if it is to achieve value for money from its assurance arrangements.”
Other projects looked at by the NAO included a new £105m newsroom computer system and the £75m MyBBC online services and data project.
Nick Prettejohn, chair of the BBC Trust’s value for money committee, said: “Learning from experience is important in any organisation and the BBC has done a lot to speed up project reporting and introduce stronger oversight.”
The report will be scrutinised by the House of Commons public accounts committee in July at a hearing to be attended by the BBC’s director general, Tony Hall.
A BBC spokesman said: “As this report recognises, we have significantly strengthened our management, oversight and accountability of BBC projects.
“We welcome the fact that the NAO did not find any major issues and determined that the financial benefits are actually double the forecasted project costs.
“Each project either delivers significant new savings or significant new services to the licence fee payer.”
