Cerberus

Rating: Compared to financial year 24/25 Q4, the NISTA Delivery Confidence Assessment (DCA) rating at 25/26 Q4 remained AMBER. This reflects a balanced position of continued delivery progress alongside the scale, complexity, and transition risks inherent in the programme’s next delivery phase. The programme has demonstrated improved delivery confidence over the last year through strengthened programme management, clearer ownership of the product backlog, and effective closure of critical recommendations from previous NISTA assurance activity. Delivery performance has stabilised, with Cerberus continuing to forecast delivery within its agreed cost, schedule, and quality parameters and evidencing more mature planning, governance, and risk management practices. The AMBER rating also reflects the scale and ambition of Cerberus as a Tier A GMPP programme, including complex data integration, operational dependency management, and transition from legacy systems. While delivery confidence has improved, residual risks remain around supplier transition, dependency management, and the coordination of business change alongside technical delivery. These risks are recognised and actively managed through strengthened governance, enhanced assurance, and closer collaboration between the programme team, Home Office Digital, and operational stakeholders. Overall, the maintained AMBER rating provides a fair and proportionate reflection of Cerberus’ improving delivery trajectory, while recognising the inherent complexity of delivering large‑scale, data‑enabled border security capabilities within a live operational environment.

Schedule: Compared to financial year 24/25-Q4, the project's end-date at 25/26-Q4 remained the same. Despite earlier delivery challenges and the need to re sequence activity in response to technical, supplier and operational dependencies, the programme has remained focused on delivery. The revised delivery profile supports the completion of priority capability within a complex operating environment, while allowing for greater delivery confidence following programme stabilisation. The schedule continues to be driven by the need to complete critical passenger and goods targeting capabilities, including Air Passenger and RoRo delivery, which sit on the critical path to the decommissioning of legacy systems. Maintaining the existing end date has required re‑sequencing activity within the delivery plan to prioritise operational readiness, data quality, and assurance requirements, particularly where earlier phases identified the need to strengthen audit and controls before progressing further capability. In addition, the programme operates within a highly interdependent delivery environment, relying on upstream data pipelines, shared platforms, and alignment with wider Border Force and Home Office transformation activity. The schedule reflects these dependencies and is designed to minimise risk to frontline operations while ensuring Cerberus delivers a sustainable, multi‑modal targeting capability. Overall, retaining the previously published end‑date demonstrates that Cerberus has absorbed delivery complexity through re-planning and prioritisation rather than extending the programme timeline, while maintaining confidence in the achievability of the final end state.

Cost: Compared to financial year 24/25 Q4, the project's departmentally agreed Whole Life Cost at 25/26-Q4 (measured in £m) increased from £240.970m to £288.70m. This is primarily driven by higher transition costs resulting from the supplier change. Monitoring and Evaluation work as part of the InvesCo condition, and a review of run costs.

Source: NISTA Major Projects Annual Report 2025-26 (data)

Rating: Compared to financial year 23/24-Q4, the Infrastructure Project Authority's Delivery Confidence Assessment rating at 24/25-Q4 remained at AMBER. This is primarily due to the following factors‚ The Delivery Confidence Assessment is rated Amber because successful delivery of the programme to time, cost and quality appears feasible but there are some issues which already exist requiring management attention. Whilst significant progress has been made in the last year, the programme accepts that challenges around delivery and change management, and business preparedness still exist and as such these are being focused to be improved.

Schedule: Compared to financial year 23/24-Q4, the project's end-date at 24/25-Q4 increased from 31/03/2025 to 31/03/2030. This is primarily due to the following factors‚ The programmes previous end date was March 2025 as previously this was when funding was secured for. Following ongoing engagement with NISTA, further funding was sought to continue developing Cerberus post 25 to the end of the appraisal period 29/30 which is reflected in the new end-date.

Cost: Compared to financial year 23/24-Q4, the project's departmentally agreed Whole Life Cost at 24/25-Q4 (measured in £m) increased from 147 to 240. This is primarily due to the following factors‚ This is due to the Run Cost being reviewed and the Programme WLC now covers up to FY34/35 rather than FY29/30.

Source: NISTA Annual Report 2024-25 (data)

Rating: Compared to financial year 22/23-Q4, the Delivery Confidence Assessment rating at 23/24-Q4 decreased from Red(SRO rating) to Amber(IPA rating). This is primarily due to the following factors. At Q4 new senior resource was brought into the Programme to help improve delivery, and get the Programme on the trajectory to Green. Q4 delivery confidence remained RED but is trending down._x000D_ Test and fix approaches have been improved already along with the allocation of specific delivery managers for specific releases. _x000D_ A full review of governance and control processes are ongoing. A number of new structures have been put in place already around risk management and reporting to allow for maturing conversation within the Programme. This work will continue for the remainder of the Programme.

Schedule: Compared to financial year 22/23-Q4, the project's end-date at 23/24-Q4 remained schedule to finish on 2025-03-31. This is primarily due to the following factors. The programme is still on track to finish as scheduled on 31st March 2025

Cost: Compared to financial year 22/23-Q4, the project's departmental-agree Whole Life Cost at 23/24-Q4 decreased from 198m. to 147m. This is primarily due to the following factors. The programme is currently preparing a new business case for FY 24/25 where an indicative budget of 27.88m has been allocated and an options document is being prepared for InvestCo review. Until the business case has been finalised the WLC may or may not be affected.

Source: IPA Annual Report 2023-24 (data)