17 The January 2004 business case for the Bicester accommodation centre recommended letting a design, build and operate contract for a 750 place centre. The construction phase was to last three years and the operational phase would run for ten years. The business case set out the strategic, economic, commercial, financial, and project management cases for the Bicester project. The Home Office calculated that the net present cost of the project excluding benefits would be £179 million, as it estimated that Bicester would cost around £18 million a year at non-indexed prices to run.
18 Seven areas of potential benefit from accommodation centres were identified (see Figure 4), five of which were quantified in financial terms and totalled around £10.6 million a year at non-indexed prices. The benefits were less than expected costs and were heavily qualified. Only initial high level work had been carried out to identify them in advance of a more detailed benefits realisation exercise. The benefits were based on assumptions and could not be tested in advance of the trial. Many were intangible and difficult to quantify.