January 28, 2026
Bookmark this outrage
The UK paid £4.1M for a bookmarks site
£4.1M for a link list — taxpayers fume as devs roast the ‘AI Skills Hub’
TLDR: UK officials paid £4.1M to PwC for an AI training hub that mostly links to other sites and shipped with errors and accessibility gaps. Commenters are roasting it as a £4M bookmarks page, questioning procurement, and warning this signals bigger, costlier tech misfires to come.
The UK’s new “AI Skills Hub” — meant to teach 10 million workers by 2030 — is getting dragged online for being, well, a glorified bookmarks page. Built by PwC for £4.1M, the site mostly links to external courses like Salesforce’s Trailhead, ships with clunky navigation, and even cites US “fair use” instead of the UK’s stricter “fair dealing.” The kicker? PwC itself says it doesn’t fully meet accessibility standards. Yikes. The crowd is not subtle. One top comment spits, “Scammers are winners,” while another deadpans, “I’d have done it for £4.0.” Others joked the team should’ve used its “AI skills to vibe code this.” The roast extends to procurement: users suspect a “write-the-RFP-for-your-mate” situation, wondering if the tender was crafted so only one big player could win. That spirals into bigger fears: if we can blow millions on a link list, what happens when the government tackles a full “Digital ID” platform? Cue ominous references to past mega-spend fiascos. Through it all, frustrated devs insist a small UK shop could’ve built a cleaner, accessible site for a fraction. Almost no one shows up to defend the spend. It’s a rare internet consensus: this announcement and its £4.1M tender landed like a lead balloon — and the comments are the main event.
Key Points
- •The UK Government launched the AI Skills Hub to train 10 million workers in AI by 2030.
- •A procurement notice shows PwC delivered the main site for £4.1 million (~$5.66 million).
- •The site primarily links to external training content, such as Salesforce’s Trailhead, rather than hosting original courses.
- •PwC’s accessibility policy acknowledges the platform does not fully meet accessibility standards.
- •A course on intellectual property references “fair use,” a U.S. concept, while UK law uses “fair dealing,” and reported usability issues include a hard-to-find enroll button and a closed ‘Skills & Training Gap Analysis’ page.