UK government spent €300 million transitioning to a “dead” Windows 10

The UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) spent £312 million upgrading its computers to Windows 10, according to Windows Central.

Microsoft officially ended support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025, ten years after its initial release. The company has since shifted its focus to Windows 11, which continues to receive feature and security updates.

Defra completed the upgrade of 31,500 laptops from Windows 7 to Windows 10 over a two-year period. The total cost amounted to about £312 million (approximately €300 million).

The issue is that the department essentially moved from one outdated operating system to another that has now also reached end of life. The timing could hardly have been worse for UK taxpayers.

Details of the upgrade were revealed in an official report from David Hill, Defra’s interim permanent secretary. The report was filed on October 10, 2025, 17 months later than planned.

In addition to replacing Windows 7, Defra resolved 49,000 critical security vulnerabilities across its IT network and migrated 137 legacy applications to newer infrastructure.

The department still needs to replace 24,000 more devices and 26,000 smartphones. These changes are planned over the next three years.

All 31,500 laptops that were just upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 are now effectively operating on borrowed time. Microsoft’s extended security updates program may provide one more year of support at no additional cost.

Government IT modernization is often slow, but Microsoft’s retirement of Windows 10 has complicated the situation. Ending support while nearly half of all Windows users worldwide still rely on the OS has fueled criticism of planned obsolescence.

Defra is now facing the same challenge it encountered with Windows 7. And similar situations are likely unfolding across other government agencies and corporations around the world.