With spiralling costs and issues around test processing, there are questions over the ability of the Rosalind Franklin Laboratory – once hailed as key to Britain’s fight against Covid-19 – to cope with the nation’s testing needs, writes Science Correspondent
It was hailed as a cutting-edge laboratory that would play a key role in response to Covid-19 and future epidemics, carrying out 300,000 tests a day.
Announcing the project in November 2020, then-health secretary Matt Hancock said the project “confirms the UK as a world leader in diagnostics”.
But less than 18 months later, the Rosalind Franklin Laboratory – named in honour of the renowned British scientist – has been plagued by failure while costing almost twice as much as its initial £588m budget, The Independent understands.
Instead of being at the forefront of the fight against Covid, the project opened six months late, facing a string of issues with equipment, staff and construction, with barely 20 per cent of its touted capacity being reached.
Now, as the government winds down its private “lighthouse” testing labs as part of the plan to “live with Covid”, leaving the Leamington Spa facility as the last lab standing, there are questions about the future of the site – and whether it would be able to cope with the nation’s testing needs alone if another deadly wave of Covid were to emerge.
‘Massive pushbacks’
The project was announced as a flagship for the new UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), which replaced Public Health England as the body responsible for protecting the public from infectious disease.
The 220,000 square foot site, lauded as the largest testing facility of its kind in Europe, had been due to open the first of its processing lines in January 2021, the peak of the second wave of Covid-19. By June that year, all 12 lines were to be functional.
However, it was not until 13 July that the laboratory was formally opened, with just a single line running. It was acknowledged that four of the lines would never be built, despite officials placing and receiving orders for testing equipment worth millions, sources involved in setting up the lab told The Independent.
“The Department for Health has said that was the plan all along. That absolutely was not the plan,” said an ex-senior scientist.
Insiders say construction delays also played a role, while attempts to avoid certifying equipment to speed up the process were stopped at the 11th hour, contributing to “massive pushbacks”. The UKHSA has said these claims are untrue.
Insiders believe these delays could have been avoided had the RFL recruited scientists and clinicians with the relevant experience from the beginning of the project, instead of relying on private consultants whose knowledge of working in the NHS was “almost non-existent”.
According to emails seen by The Independent, 31 lab support technicians were informed last summer – days before they were due to start work – that they would be paid to stay at home indefinitely due to delays, at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds to the taxpayer. A further 700 staff were on retainer last summer but had yet to begin work.
Staff “are all on short-term contracts,” said one senior scientist overseeing the UK’s Lighthouse Lab network. “That creates problems in running labs because if you’re on a short-term contract, and the longer-term job comes up, you’re naturally going to move on.”
‘Spiralling costs’
Its total budget was set at £588m, according to internal figures from June 2021. But by May that year, £500m had already been spent with costs “spiralling”, the former senior scientist said.
By November, the site was hundreds of millions of pounds over budget, according to another person familiar with the project’s finances. By February, estimates put the project’s cost at £1.1bn, according to a Treasury source, who said costs were now out of hand. The UKHSA has said it does not recognise these numbers.
In reality, government officials do not have a clear picture of how much has been spent on the project, according to the Treasury insider and a consultant involved in reviewing the lab’s future.
Prior to the opening of the site, when it became apparent that the RFL would not be built to its original intended size, procurement teams were pressured to break contracts with suppliers and “write off orders” for equipment worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, insiders say.
“We were told under no uncertain terms to never provide things like long-term equipment delivery schedules because that could be considered a promise to the supplier to honour the original arrangement in a court of law,” said the former senior scientist, who helped oversee procurement for the lab.
The Independent has been told that attempts were made by the Treasury to “pull the plug” on the project due to the spiralling costs, but was persuaded against it. The site is now “under review” by HMT officials. The Treasury declined to comment.
Professor Colin Fink, a medical director at the private diagnostics firm Microbiology, said: “The whole thing was too late, really. We could have done it for a tenth of the price … They didn’t want us involved at all.”
‘Breaking constantly’
By October last year, the lab had processed its millionth Covid test. Under the government’s plans, it had been hoped the RFL would be working through 100,000 samples a day – revised down from 300,000. Instead, the lab was typically processing just 11,500, analysis suggests.
While this has risen in the months since, estimates from scientists put the average at 25,000 to 30,000 a day. The lab has never processed more than 65,000 tests in the space of 24 hours, 22 per cent of the initial projected capacity.
Sources say testing has been hindered by repeated mechanical malfunctions. A former lab worker questioned whether the machines, which are “very sophisticated and expensive”, were designed to run 24 hours a day.
“Some have been out of action at least once a week,” they said. Another source said “machines [were] breaking constantly, at a rate which should not happen”. A third said the mechanical issues occurred on a daily basis.
UKHSA has said equipment was routinely inspected and that multiple machines allowed testing to continue if one were to break.
If machines break during a night shift, staff are expected to call support teams in the US for to try to fix the equipment. “This is done via WhatsApp Video and can take two to three hours, during which time everything is put on hold,” which risked spoiled tests, one former senior member of staff in the lab said.
Concerns have also been raised that items used for the equipment, such as pipetting tips, are not compatible with the machines. This “means they are running outside of spec, so the manufacturers do not guarantee the validity of the results,” said a senior administrative source with oversight of the entire lab.
The former senior staff member said “tens of thousands” of tests had been redirected elsewhere in the government’s “lighthouse” network of private laboratories, including the Milton Keynes site, as a result of the repeated mechanical failings and lack of capacity.
Some 217,000 samples were diverted away from the lab between September last year and mid-March due to planned and unplanned circumstances, UKHSA said. This is “a safe and routine part of operations,” a spokesperson added.
But despite an awareness among staff that equipment regularly breaks, leading to the generation of invalid test results, such failures aren’t always reported to UKHSA, lab insiders say.
“There’s a suspicion among some of the lab staff that these sorts of events … are to some extent routine,” said the senior administrative source, referencing sample contamination incidents that had “been brushed under the carpet”. UKHSA has said it does not recognise these claims.
In the vast majority of cases, incorrect results are identified by the lab’s quality control and evaluation teams, at which point the original sample is retested.
However, some false negatives and positives have slipped under the radar and were only retrospectively identified after the results had been returned to the public, according to three separate sources, including one with knowledge of the lab’s test verification system. UKHSA has also said it was not aware of this.
Last June, following a software update to the lab’s testing systems, around 1,900 samples were contaminated during processing and deemed invalid. After the issue was resolved, the affected members of the public were informed of the mistake and told to re-take their tests.
Another famous cutting edge project. Astra zeneca vaccine was the best in the world. Lol. @%#&!! bojo and his corrupted tory lot. Lock ‘em up!
They can probably use it to study how clapping can save the British economy.
This article only partly hits its targets.
The whole site is unfortunately controlled by UKHSA …… and they couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery.
Add in staff on every level with little experience on short term contracts.
Add in the location – which is bloody awful for this setup. It should have been south of Cambridge where they might have actually employed staff worth getting.
Add in some absolute cockups in building the labs – far too many to list.
It’s a white elephant that the management are incapable of running.
We need to study how long COVID affects people as time goes on, including the efficacy of treatments and therapies. Why not use it for crunching that data?
No point fixing this. After all there won’t be another epidemic.
6 comments
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With spiralling costs and issues around test processing, there are questions over the ability of the Rosalind Franklin Laboratory – once hailed as key to Britain’s fight against Covid-19 – to cope with the nation’s testing needs, writes Science Correspondent
It was hailed as a cutting-edge laboratory that would play a key role in response to Covid-19 and future epidemics, carrying out 300,000 tests a day.
Announcing the project in November 2020, then-health secretary Matt Hancock said the project “confirms the UK as a world leader in diagnostics”.
But less than 18 months later, the Rosalind Franklin Laboratory – named in honour of the renowned British scientist – has been plagued by failure while costing almost twice as much as its initial £588m budget, The Independent understands.
Instead of being at the forefront of the fight against Covid, the project opened six months late, facing a string of issues with equipment, staff and construction, with barely 20 per cent of its touted capacity being reached.
Now, as the government winds down its private “lighthouse” testing labs as part of the plan to “live with Covid”, leaving the Leamington Spa facility as the last lab standing, there are questions about the future of the site – and whether it would be able to cope with the nation’s testing needs alone if another deadly wave of Covid were to emerge.
‘Massive pushbacks’
The project was announced as a flagship for the new UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), which replaced Public Health England as the body responsible for protecting the public from infectious disease.
The 220,000 square foot site, lauded as the largest testing facility of its kind in Europe, had been due to open the first of its processing lines in January 2021, the peak of the second wave of Covid-19. By June that year, all 12 lines were to be functional.
However, it was not until 13 July that the laboratory was formally opened, with just a single line running. It was acknowledged that four of the lines would never be built, despite officials placing and receiving orders for testing equipment worth millions, sources involved in setting up the lab told The Independent.
“The Department for Health has said that was the plan all along. That absolutely was not the plan,” said an ex-senior scientist.
Insiders say construction delays also played a role, while attempts to avoid certifying equipment to speed up the process were stopped at the 11th hour, contributing to “massive pushbacks”. The UKHSA has said these claims are untrue.
Insiders believe these delays could have been avoided had the RFL recruited scientists and clinicians with the relevant experience from the beginning of the project, instead of relying on private consultants whose knowledge of working in the NHS was “almost non-existent”.
According to emails seen by The Independent, 31 lab support technicians were informed last summer – days before they were due to start work – that they would be paid to stay at home indefinitely due to delays, at a cost of tens of thousands of pounds to the taxpayer. A further 700 staff were on retainer last summer but had yet to begin work.
Staff “are all on short-term contracts,” said one senior scientist overseeing the UK’s Lighthouse Lab network. “That creates problems in running labs because if you’re on a short-term contract, and the longer-term job comes up, you’re naturally going to move on.”
‘Spiralling costs’
Its total budget was set at £588m, according to internal figures from June 2021. But by May that year, £500m had already been spent with costs “spiralling”, the former senior scientist said.
By November, the site was hundreds of millions of pounds over budget, according to another person familiar with the project’s finances. By February, estimates put the project’s cost at £1.1bn, according to a Treasury source, who said costs were now out of hand. The UKHSA has said it does not recognise these numbers.
In reality, government officials do not have a clear picture of how much has been spent on the project, according to the Treasury insider and a consultant involved in reviewing the lab’s future.
Prior to the opening of the site, when it became apparent that the RFL would not be built to its original intended size, procurement teams were pressured to break contracts with suppliers and “write off orders” for equipment worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, insiders say.
“We were told under no uncertain terms to never provide things like long-term equipment delivery schedules because that could be considered a promise to the supplier to honour the original arrangement in a court of law,” said the former senior scientist, who helped oversee procurement for the lab.
The Independent has been told that attempts were made by the Treasury to “pull the plug” on the project due to the spiralling costs, but was persuaded against it. The site is now “under review” by HMT officials. The Treasury declined to comment.
Professor Colin Fink, a medical director at the private diagnostics firm Microbiology, said: “The whole thing was too late, really. We could have done it for a tenth of the price … They didn’t want us involved at all.”
‘Breaking constantly’
By October last year, the lab had processed its millionth Covid test. Under the government’s plans, it had been hoped the RFL would be working through 100,000 samples a day – revised down from 300,000. Instead, the lab was typically processing just 11,500, analysis suggests.
While this has risen in the months since, estimates from scientists put the average at 25,000 to 30,000 a day. The lab has never processed more than 65,000 tests in the space of 24 hours, 22 per cent of the initial projected capacity.
Sources say testing has been hindered by repeated mechanical malfunctions. A former lab worker questioned whether the machines, which are “very sophisticated and expensive”, were designed to run 24 hours a day.
“Some have been out of action at least once a week,” they said. Another source said “machines [were] breaking constantly, at a rate which should not happen”. A third said the mechanical issues occurred on a daily basis.
UKHSA has said equipment was routinely inspected and that multiple machines allowed testing to continue if one were to break.
If machines break during a night shift, staff are expected to call support teams in the US for to try to fix the equipment. “This is done via WhatsApp Video and can take two to three hours, during which time everything is put on hold,” which risked spoiled tests, one former senior member of staff in the lab said.
Concerns have also been raised that items used for the equipment, such as pipetting tips, are not compatible with the machines. This “means they are running outside of spec, so the manufacturers do not guarantee the validity of the results,” said a senior administrative source with oversight of the entire lab.
The former senior staff member said “tens of thousands” of tests had been redirected elsewhere in the government’s “lighthouse” network of private laboratories, including the Milton Keynes site, as a result of the repeated mechanical failings and lack of capacity.
Some 217,000 samples were diverted away from the lab between September last year and mid-March due to planned and unplanned circumstances, UKHSA said. This is “a safe and routine part of operations,” a spokesperson added.
But despite an awareness among staff that equipment regularly breaks, leading to the generation of invalid test results, such failures aren’t always reported to UKHSA, lab insiders say.
“There’s a suspicion among some of the lab staff that these sorts of events … are to some extent routine,” said the senior administrative source, referencing sample contamination incidents that had “been brushed under the carpet”. UKHSA has said it does not recognise these claims.
In the vast majority of cases, incorrect results are identified by the lab’s quality control and evaluation teams, at which point the original sample is retested.
However, some false negatives and positives have slipped under the radar and were only retrospectively identified after the results had been returned to the public, according to three separate sources, including one with knowledge of the lab’s test verification system. UKHSA has also said it was not aware of this.
Last June, following a software update to the lab’s testing systems, around 1,900 samples were contaminated during processing and deemed invalid. After the issue was resolved, the affected members of the public were informed of the mistake and told to re-take their tests.
Another famous cutting edge project. Astra zeneca vaccine was the best in the world. Lol. @%#&!! bojo and his corrupted tory lot. Lock ‘em up!
They can probably use it to study how clapping can save the British economy.
This article only partly hits its targets.
The whole site is unfortunately controlled by UKHSA …… and they couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery.
Add in staff on every level with little experience on short term contracts.
Add in the location – which is bloody awful for this setup. It should have been south of Cambridge where they might have actually employed staff worth getting.
Add in some absolute cockups in building the labs – far too many to list.
It’s a white elephant that the management are incapable of running.
We need to study how long COVID affects people as time goes on, including the efficacy of treatments and therapies. Why not use it for crunching that data?
No point fixing this. After all there won’t be another epidemic.