Former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott yesterday pinned the blame for the botched £500m fire control project on his civil servants.

He accused the Whitehall Mandarins of keeping him in the dark about the soaring cost of the scheme, which was abandoned after Labour lost the election.

As the Daily Press reported earlier this week, the Commons Public Accounts Committee said the officials responsible for the failures had been promoted, not disciplined.

Lord Prescott wanted to switch all six South West fire control rooms to a purpose-built base at Blackbrook Business Park, Taunton.

It was part of a scheme to replace the 46 local control rooms across England with nine purpose-built regional centres linked by new IT.

In a rare interview on the subject, Lord Prescott said he took responsibility for the policy, which was needed as the individual fire services had inadequate resources, and could not even communicate with each other.

The FiReControl (cor) scheme began in 2004, and began to go wrong three or four years later, he said.

But Ministers were not told that costs were spiralling to four times the original estimate, which he slammed as “unbelievable”. Lord Prescott said at the time he was dealing with other major problems such as the financial meltdown of the Channel Tunnel rail link, and the delayed Jubilee Line Tube scheme in London.

“I take responsibility for the policy, I will take my share, but why don’t you ask the Civil Service why it didn’t tell the Minister what was going wrong? And how the hell did it go from £100 million odd to £500 million – the taxpayer is entitled to know?”

Lord Prescott also attacked the Fire Brigades Union for its “hostility” to the project, but its leader, Matt Wrack, hit back saying they had been right to fight it.

He said: “Only a Minister who doesn’t know what’s going on blames others. Prescott has no excuse – he was told by the FBU, among others. He was clearly not doing his job properly.

“Instead of accepting his own central role in authoring and driving this disastrous project, he prefers to blame those who work in the service and pass the buck. The central failing of FiReControl was political. Prescott was the prime mover and the Secretary of State who could have ended the project at any point.”

But Mr Wrack also accused the coalition Government of making the “same mistakes”, adding: “It is closing control rooms, seeking to privatise the fire service and cutting firefighter jobs.”

The only one of the nine buildings being used is in London, and the other eight remain empty.

There are talks going on over four buildings, but there is little chance of the West’s fire brigades using the Taunton one, as it would be too big and too expensive.

It was expensively kitted out, complete with a £6,000 coffee machine, and the Daily Press has revealed it will cost almost £3 million in just 18 months on rent and other bills.