Defra admits Windows 10 refresh letter to MPs was wrong – machines were already on Windows 11

The UK's Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) has confirmed its £312 million Windows 10 laptop refresh was, in fact, followed by a Windows 11 upgrade after an earlier letter to Parliament misstated the department's operating system timeline.

In October, Defra wrote a (still-accessible) letter to a Parliamentary spending watchdog about "upgrading obsolete devices and software, including removing 31,500 Windows 7 laptops from the estate and upgrading to Windows 10," in response to calls for the department to modernize its IT.

The Register reported on the letter, which arrived at the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) more than a year after its May 2024 deadline, and – naturally – noted that Defra had invested heavily in a new OS just as it was approaching Microsoft's support cliff.

Defra was quick to respond by calling out "inaccuracies" in our reporting, but as it happens, those so-called inaccuracies were ...