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During the Knob’s first week he announced Number 10 o’t North and stated confidently it would actually cost nothing because it would come out of existing Cabinet Office budgets, around £1.75 billion. He finished off his first week by working at the temporary Number 10 o’t North. They are leasing a conference room in Heron House so that will not be free and he flew there in an A321 at a reputed cost of £30,000. His nothing is not quite the same as our idea of nothing. I do like to hear politicians say that they are working because from what we can all see they do very little. Our idea of work and their idea of work are light years apart.
Former Brexit Campaigner and self proclaimed Chief Gammon June Slater has come up with the following costs, some one-off, others annual.
- Secure IT Networks – 15 to 30 million for encrypted communications systems, this also sounds like an awful lot of money.
- Close Protection Details projected at 5 to 15 million per annum for specialised policing. Now the unit that handles this is the SEG or Special Escort Group of the Met Police. No other force has such a unit so they will have to be up and down to Manchester every week like a yo-yo.
- Protest Management is expected to cost Greater Manchester Police 3 to 4 million per annum
- Permanent Site at Ancoats – Long Term physical blast protection estimated at 300 million
Total Long Term footprint 250 to 500 million
Rob Duncan, Executive Member for Housing and Advice in Trafford Conservatives, estimates it will cost £110 million a year.
So far nobody has mentioned Travel and Commuting. This is expected to cost 4 to 6 million per annum and could be significantly higher if the A321 is used frequently.
Estimates of annual cost and one-offs range from tens of millions to half a billion pounds. Most government estimates are out by at least a factor of three so if this runs true to form it will be costing us a lot of money we don’t have.
The question has been posed asking if a subsequent PM comes from say Newcastle, will he want to move the Number 10 o’t North to his area. The whole thing is a fiasco. An even bigger question is whether any future PM will even want to meet in Manchester and could easily just shut it all down.
Number 10 in Downing Street is close to the House of Shame, next door to the Chancellor and round the corner from the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office to name but a few. Proximity is the reason they are all in Whitehall. Number 10 o’t North is just a vanity project for a charlatan of a Prime Minister who has apparently made 35 Tik Toks in his first 2 weeks, perhaps he thinks making these is actually work.
All in all £1.75 billion for a Cabinet Office seems like an awful lot of money for the Prime Ministers advisors to go through. These politicians are brazen in their use of our money.
© well_chuffed 2026
