HUNDREDS of millions of pounds has been squandered by the government on a failed immigration IT project, auditors revealed today.

The National Audit Office is publishing its report today into the break-up of the UK Border Agency, which was split into two Home Office directorates last year — UK Visas and Immigration and Immigration Enforcement.

While auditors noted that the new service “had no significant performance falls” improvements have not been made across the whole business.

Auditors found that departmental flagship the Immigration Casework (ICW) programme, which was supposed to replace 21 separate systems with one database, had been an unmitigated failure.

Up to £347 million was spent on ICW before it was closed in August 2013, having not delivered planned work.

Civil service union PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: “While hundreds of millions of pounds goes down the drain there are still large backlogs of immigration and asylum cases and staff are being hampered from doing their jobs by outdated technology.

“Splitting the UK Border Agency was supposed to improve matters, but performance has not significantly increased and the NAO has issued warnings about staffing shortages and the impact of spending cuts.”