Clearly Paid Too Much

Andrew Tindall at Liberal Conspiracy sent a FoI request to the Cabinet Office to find out how much the e-petitions website costs. Turns out it cost £80,700 to develop and £32,000 a year to maintain. Andrew concludes:

So there we have it, they clearly paid too much for what was such an unstable service, but it’s still one of the cheaper government initiatives we’ve seen in recent years.

But wait, how much did the old e-petitions website cost? According to this Commons report (pdf):

The Deputy Leader stated that the set-up costs of the Downing Street site were £17,500 and that the annual running costs are £109,100.

So after two years, this one would cost £91,000 less than the one produced by Labour and would continue to cost £77,100 less each year.