UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs Spent €354 Million on Windows 10 Upgrade Facing Imminent End-of-Life
London, UK – November 6, 2025 – The British department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) spent approximately €354 million (312 million GBP) upgrading 31,500 aging Windows 7 notebooks to Windows 10, a move now drawing scrutiny as Windows 10 reaches it’s end of support on October 14, 2025. The details emerged in a recently published letter from David Hill, Interim Chief Executive at Defra, to Sir Geoffrey clifton-Brown MP, Chair of the Parliamentary Audit Committee.
The investment was made during the 2022-23 to 2024-25 spending review period and was initially prompted by a May 2023 Audit Committee report recommending Defra demonstrate the efficiencies gained from IT modernization. According to the letter, the upgrades also addressed over 49,000 “critical vulnerabilities,” migrated 137 legacy applications, and facilitated the closure of one aging data center, with three more planned. A “Hyper Care” security solution is also being deployed for older servers pending full upgrades.
However, the timing of the investment raises concerns. With Windows 10 22H2 no longer supported, Defra will now need to purchase Extended Security update (ESU) licenses or migrate to a new operating system, such as Windows 11 or Linux, within the next three years.
The story was first reported by The Register, who reached out to Defra for comment but received no response.The publication’s article can be found here: https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/05/uk_defra_dept_spent_312m_window_10/?td=rt-3a.
The full letter to the Audit Committee is available here: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/49838/documents/267198/default/
