This smart new £13 million building is costing you – the taxpayer – £5,000 every day, even though it sits empty four years after it was constructed.

Situated on an industrial estate in Castle Donington, it was meant to be the new fire control centre for the East Midlands – part of a Government plan to replace 46 local fire and rescue control rooms across the country with nine new regional centres.

However, the project fell into disarray, with costs rising from an initial estimated price tag of £120 million to about £460 million before it was eventually abandoned last December.

Last month, a House of Commons select committee described the expensive fiasco as one of the "worst cases of project failure" that it had seen in many years.

The cost to the taxpayer, however, did not end there.

The Castle Donington site is one of eight planned control centres which continue to cost us all a small fortune – even though they remain unoccupied.

The building, which is fully furnished and equipped with the latest technology, even has its own cleaners, a gardener who tends its grounds and security staff who patrol it 24 hours a day – and all at taxpayers' expense.

Empty £13m fire HQ is costing taxpayer £5,000 a day

If you want to know the full story of the £13 million Regional Control Centre in Castle Donington – the folly, the grand waste, the political mismanagement of a plan that seemed almost doomed to expensive failure from its controversial inception – then let’s begin with the building’s garden, the neatly-tended border which runs round the perimeter of this unused white elephant.

The huge two-storey fire control centre is situated at the edge of the Willow Farm Industrial Estate, in Castle Donington. It was built in 2007 and was supposed to be the operational nerve centre for Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire fire and rescue brigades.

It has never been properly used. Apart from some minor office activity, it has stood empty – embarrassingly, expensively empty – ever since.

Inside are phones that have never rung, seats that have never been sat on and one of the biggest TV screens in Europe that has never worked.

But before we go there, let’s begin with the borders. The border runs along the front of the building, and inside not one, but two, perimeter fences. They’re neat and attractive and surprisingly well-looked after. Which is odd, really, when you think that the only people who occupy this building are the security men who patrol it 24 hours a day.

There’s a reason why the borders look so neat. Every week in the summer – not quite so often in the autumn and winter – a gardener arrives in his van and tends to them.

Anne works in one of the offices nearby. The empty fire centre is a common source of incredulity in the area.

“We couldn’t believe it when we first saw him,” says Anne. “A gardener to tend the gardens of an empty building that has never been used.”

It’s not just the man who tends to the hardy perennials around the unused fire control centre. A few weeks ago, there were a small team of workmen doing something, no-one knows what, on the roof of the empty building.

Every week or so, a refuse lorry swings into the gated entrance. Why? Why is there rubbish to collect if no-one is using the building? No-one knows.

There is so much unexplained activity here, and so little in the way of explanation, says Anne, that all kinds of conspiracy theories have begun to flourish in the news vacuum.

The cleaners that still come to clean the place – there are fewer of them, but they still come – have signed the Official Secrets Act, the rumour-mongers on the industrial estate say.

Beneath the building, there are living quarters for all the great and good of the East Midlands, they say, and with enough provisions to last three months.

It all seems laughably unlikely, and yet, with the ludicrous story of Regional Control Centre, it would be naive to rule it out.

Because what we do know is every bit as strange, every bit as unlikely, as some of the conspiracy theories currently raising eyebrows with people nearby.

The story begins in 2002, when the fire and rescue service was moved from the control of the Home Office to the Department of the Deputy Prime Minister, Environment and the Regions, the brief overseen by John Prescott.

His idea was simple, if immediately unpopular. Prescott wanted a new tier of regional government across the UK.

It stood to reason, therefore, if there was a new layer of regional government, that this newly-created authority could oversee the nation’s fire services.

It would be easier and cheaper, claimed Prescott, outlining a plan to build nine regional fire control centres across the UK.

It was going to cost, initially, £120 million. It was expensive, but that money would be re-couped inside five years. That was the argument. It appeared initially attractive. It fell apart, however, like a badly-built house of cards.

The costs soon spiraled from £120 million in 2004, to £260 million in 2006, to £380 million in 2008.

So far, in October 2011, about £460 million had been spent on this plan. The scheme was pulled this year. What is not so widely known is how much these buildings are still draining the public purse.

They were funded by a specific kind of private finance initiative, called a Private Developer Scheme. This is where privately-owned companies develop public sector buildings.

Politicians talk grandly of public/private partnerships as a handy way of providing public facilities with private finance. But this comes at a price – and it’s usually a hefty one.

The Castle Donington centre was constructed by local builders Wilson Bowden. There is nothing wrong with the quality of the centre, says Fire Brigades’ Union spokesman Duncan Milligan. It was built to a decent standard, on budget and on time.

There is plenty wrong, however, with how taxpayers are having to foot the bill – a bill they will continue to foot until 2032.

The fire centre in Castle Donington cost £13 million. Under the 25-year Private Developer Scheme, the real cost rises to £38 million.

Every day this building stands unused, it costs taxpayers more than £5,000.

That’s £5,000 every day, £154,000 every month – £1.84 million every year, just to keep it there – unused, empty, patrolled by a man in a uniform who really doesn’t like it when a journalist from the local newspaper turns up asking awkward questions.

Since January 20, 2008, when the 25-year contract started – there was a six-month rent-free period where the IT systems and equipment was supposed to be fitted.

They weren’t, and a total of £6,976,220 has been paid in rent since.

So, the public will pay £38 million for a £13 million building that stands idle; albeit idle with neatly-tended borders and, possibly, cleaners that have signed the Official Secrets Act.

It doesn’t end there, however.

In 2032, when the lease has expired and the building has been paid for – and paid for nearly three times over – the centre does not revert to public ownership.

Instead, it will be owned by Evans Randall, an off-shore property investment bank. It has an impressive portfolio of landmark London buildings – and five regional fire control centres in Durham, Cambridge, Wolverhampton, Wakefield and Castle Donington.

Based in London – they own more than half of the Gherkin tower in the city – Evans Randall is a private equity group which specialises in making a profit for its shareholders. It is very good at this.

“We target after-tax returns to investors of 15 per cent to 25 per cent per annum over a three to seven-year timescale,” is their grand boast. They usually achieve it.

As part of their contract – and even though the office remains empty – Evans Randall receives its rent every month, without fail.

After five years, it benefits from a 5 per cent rent increase. The rent increases by 5 per cent every five years, whether the building is occupied or not.

Is that right? is it fair, even? Evans Randall insists it is.

If there is any mistakes here, it’s not their’s, said a spokesman.

“Responsibility for the lease on the Castle Donington Fire Control Centre lies with the Government,” he says.

“As a responsible landlord, Evans Randall is liaising with the Government’s Fire Control Centres project team and monitoring its progress in assigning the lease to an alternative occupier.

“It is clearly in the interests of both landlord and tenant that the building is occupied in future.”

Derbyshire Fire and Rescue has said it has no plans to use it. Neither do Nottingham, Northants or Lincs.

Leicestershire fire and rescue? They’re not saying very much at all, unfortunately.

We wanted to speak to chief fire and rescue officer Dave Webb. That wouldn’t be possible, it transpired.

“He’s not doing interviews about this now,” said a press officer.

We tried to contact Councillor Peter Roffey, the chairman of the Fire Brigade Authority in Leicestershire, and a Conservative councillor.

He didn’t respond to our calls.

Instead, we sent some questions to him via the brigade’s press office. He didn’t say much but he did say it was “highly unlikely” Leicestershire Fire and Rescue would use the building and that the brigade was no longer in discussion with the Government about the empty building.

Other questions – about the money, the cost, the unedifying shambles, the damning verdicts of a scheme that has haemorrhaged money – were politely side-stepped.

And there have been damning verdicts, from all quarters.

Duncan Milligan, of the Fire Brigades Union, reckons this is what happens when “people who simply do not know what they are doing – well-paid consultants with no knowledge of the fire service and what we do – are given a blank cheque to fund their unworkable ideas.

“It was like they had money to burn, and they burned it. And, they are still burning it.”

The National Audit Office said the plan was flawed from the start and did not have the support of local fire crews.

Former Labour minister Margaret Hodge, the head of the Public Accounts Committee, said the entire project was “an embarrassing failure” with the unused centres standing as “expensive white elephants”.

“No-one has been held to account for the failure of this project,” she said.

“It is one of the worst cases of project failure the committee has seen for many years.”

So who should be held to account? Is it the investment bankers?

They might seem convenient scapegoats, but it’s not them, says Duncan Milligan.

“True, they get a remarkable – and guaranteed – return on their investment. And the deal is water-tight. But they didn’t write the contract. They just signed it,” he says. “The buck should stop at the top. And that’s with John Prescott. This was his idea. Mr Prescott believed a regional perspective was more appropriate for fire authorities.”

Since things went wrong, he has only accepted partial blame, saying he was a busy government official who was not kept fully informed.

“He knew of our opinions,” says Milligan.

“It’s a matter of record that we told him several times of our very real concerns. He was not in the dark. I think he was in denial.”

We contacted John Prescott – now Lord Prescott – at his office in the House of Lords. He actually answered the phone.

When it became clear he was speaking to a journalist who wanted to ask him about the issues surrounding the failed Fire Centre Control project, without explanation he handed the phone over to his secretary.

Lord Prescott was very busy, she said. But he would definitely call us back. He didn’t.

The Government office for Communities and Local Government office is now picking up the pieces.

A spokesman said it was actively seeking a new tenant for the Castle Donington building.

“That is why we have a gardener,” he said. “We want the garden to look nice. There is no story there.”

Surely there is? Isn’t that a waste? And surely, if he has to come at all, does he have to come every week?

“I don’t know about that,” he said.

What about the refuse collectors? What about the cleaners who come in every week, and have allegedly had to sign the Official Secrets Act?

“I don’t know about that. We need to keep the building presentable, that makes sense.

“It is an emergency building and will have provisions for emergency situations but I think we can rule out some of the more outlandish conspiracy theories. They seem unlikely.

“Look, we are where we are. The problems surrounding this project have been well reported by your newspaper and others and we have commented on that.

“We are trying to find a way forward.”