The UK’s HM Revenue and Customs has signed a £220.3 million ($301.9m) deal with Fujitsu to extend its data center contract with the provider amidst efforts to remove Fujitsu tech from government systems.

As reported by PublicTechnology, the UK government has stressed that the extension will only apply for a “limited time and strict terms,” with HMRC adding that the contract is a contingency measure as the department seeks to exit three Fujitsu data centers.

The new contract spans three years, starting July 1 and ending in 2028, and will include “data center services and project services” as HMRC migrates out of the data centers.

The decision to leave Fujitsu’s data centers is in no small part down to the company being behind the Post Office’s error-ridden Horizon system, which led to around 900 post office branch managers being wrongly prosecuted for fraud during the 1999-2015 period, with at least 102 of those convictions overturned by March 2024. More than £800 million ($1.09bn) in compensation has been paid to the victims.

Public interest in the scandal was renewed in January 2024 by the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, following which Fujitsu said it was suspending bidding on UK government contracts.

The UK government told PublicTechnology, regarding the latest extension: “This contract was inherited from the previous government, and this extension will be for a limited time on strict terms to protect essential services.

“We must never forget the lives ruined by the Horizon scandal, and no amount of redress can take away that pain. This government has more than quadrupled the amount of redress paid to the victims, and in March, the Business Secretary met with Fujitsu to begin the process of paying victims compensation.”

Fujitsu operates three data centers across the UK; one in the Docklands, London; another in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, with 3,688 sqm (39,697 sq ft) of floorspace across six data halls that opened in 2010. The third facility is in Thurrock, Essex, offering 5,100 sqm (54,895 sq ft) of floorspace across four data halls.

HMRC has long been looking to leave the data centers, with the department previously contracting IBM to help it exit the Fujitsu data centers, at the time with an aimed exit of June 2022.

The organization’s FY2024 annual report stated that by the end of 2023/2024, HMRC had “successfully migrated 372 of 545 critical services, with 49 remediated,” and by August 2024, the department said it was around 70 percent through the migration effort.

In March 2025, HMRC was seeking a hyperscale partner to manage the “migration of servers from the current on-premise solution to the hyperscaler’s cloud environment” in a £500m ($649.5m) 10-year contract, expected to go to a single hyperscaler.