THE Ministry of Defence’s new Whitehall headquarters will cost the taxpayer £2.3 billion to refurbish and run, according to official figures.

This spending on offices for ministers, civil servants and top brass will fuel the row over the “squalid” and “shaming” condition of housing for ordinary soldiers.

Yesterday the Tories called for an investigation by the National Audit Office (NAO), the spending watchdog, into the private finance refurbishment project. The party said it was concerned that the scheme — where the government repays the cost of refurbishment and maintenance over 30 years — was not value for money, even allowing for inflation during that period.

More than three miles of walls were demolished to create an open-plan “highly innovative” office space, costing £27,302 per square metre, with marble and oak features restored to the “highest quality”.

For staff, refit highlights include:

A restaurant, a coffee bar, three large plasma screens on each of the 10 floors, a gym and “quiet rooms” where staff can take a break.

Over the next decade, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) will spend the equivalent of more than £75,000 for each top official working at the ministry’s headquarters on refurbishments, repairs and services. In contrast, it has budgeted just a third of the amount — only £25,000 per person — for refurbishment and repairs to soldiers’ living quarters.

The bill for the new offices would have paid the salaries of the 1,800 infantrymen who were axed in the 2004 cuts for two decades; or would have paid for 24 Chinook helicopters — that is three times the number which are struggling to move British troops around Afghanistan.

The government has previously admitted to a cost of £746m for the private finance deal. But when inflation is taken into account, actual payments over the 30-year period — as revealed in a parliamentary answer — will be £2.35 billion.

The news comes after the government admission — first revealed in The Sunday Times last weekend — that almost half the Royal Navy’s 44 warships might have to be mothballed.

The size of the bill comes amid growing concern about the government’s use of private finance initiatives (PFIs). Under these schemes, firms pay to build and manage new schools, hospitals and buildings and are then paid back by the government over several decades.

The deals — now totalling £158 billion across government — are attractive to the government because they often move large debts off their balance sheets and the risks of costly project overruns are shouldered by contractors.

However, critics say that the schemes end up costing far more than if the Treasury had just borrowed the money in the first place and that companies are making hundreds of millions of pounds from the public purse.

Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said that the figures for the building “stretched credibility”. He added: “It seems an enormous increase. When poor living conditions for servicemen and women are in the spotlight, to see the MoD purchasing the best for its civil servants will add insult to injury.”

In the MoD headquarters, staff will benefit from an array of perks. The Herman Miller Aeron chairs — the kind used by David Dimbleby on the BBC’s Question Time — have been described as “the most comfortable office chairs in the world”.

The MoD insisted that it did not pay the full £3m cost of the American-made chairs.

However, it did pay £3m for 3,120 European oak doors bought from Swift Horsman, a specialist supplier, while a further 380 original oak doors were restored at a cost of £1,200 each. “Everything was to the highest standard,” said Matt Roberts of Swift Horsman. “Each of the original oak doors had to be restored by hand.”

Five rooms, transferred from Georgian houses on the site in the 1950s, were restored and fitted with high-tech audiovisual facilities hidden in “very high-quality bespoke credenzas”, or cabinets.

One senior officer said: “I’ve worked in a good few headquarters in my 16-year service career and these are certainly the best. It’s plush and incredibly pleasant.”

Gail Richardson, 34, a soldier’s wife who lives in a damp and cold prefab in Bulford, Wiltshire, said the high cost of the building “smacked of hypocrisy”.

The MoD said there was no overspend and the deal had been praised in an audit by the NAO in 2002. “The modernisation has been a huge success, allowing us to dispose of five other central London buildings and save £18m a year — money that is being reinvested in the front line and other essential areas, including new accommodation for service personnel and their families.”

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