Government’s £750m bill for storing PPE revealed

The government was paying around £800,000 a day to keep unused protective kit domestically as recently as November 2021, according to a freedom of information response. 

With more than a billion items in storage in China, it is likely additional funds are still being spent overseas.

The Department of Health and Social Care did not confirm when asked how many items were still being stored in the country, instead saying more recent figures will be released in its next report to the Commons public accounts committee.

The DHSC has faced widespread criticism over the volume of PPE it ordered in the initial weeks after the pandemic hit the UK – much of which was not fit for use in the NHS – amid panic over shortages and distribution.

The department spent billions ordering protective kit in spring 2020 as domestic stockpiles ran low and global demand outstripped supply. But with manufacturers struggling to keep up with demand, many orders took months to be fulfilled.

This led to an influx of shipments over the autumn and winter of 2020 and, without enough warehouses available to store the equipment, shipping containers began to build up at the UK’s ports. This exacerbated an existing supply chain crisis driven by the pandemic, Brexit stockpiling and a global container shortage.

In December 2020, up to 14,000 containers of PPE were reportedly waiting to be unloaded at the Port of Felixstowe. Months later in May 2021, 10,000 containers were still being used to store PPE domestically.

The DHSC did not confirm when asked how many containers were still being used to store PPE, but it said it has been building a network of around 50 warehouses since September 2021.

A public accounts committee report on covid-19 spending singled out “excess PPE stockpiling” for criticism. According to the July 2021 report, the DHSC ordered 32 billion items of PPE, only 11 billion of which had been distributed at the time. Some 12.6 billion items were being stored in the UK, while another 8.4 billion were still “on order” from other parts of the world.

A National Audit Office report previously found the department ordered enough kit to last five years at the rate used during the first wave.

Much of this kit was not fit for purpose, with health minister Lord Bethell admitting in September last year that £2.8bn worth of PPE did not meet NHS standards.

A DHSC spokeswoman said: “During the pandemic we rightly focused on providing the PPE the health and care sector needed.

“We have been reducing our logistics cost over time and continue to do so.”