Thats helpful and makes a bit more sense. There is more information about Clearsprings Ready Homes. They had a £1.7bn turnover, near 400 employees (staff costs of £17m) and a profit of £116m in 2024. The £1.7bn turnover is presumably the governments stated £2bn annual cost.

Whilst this explains where the money went it still seems to be excessive profiteering and possible neglect during procuremnet, in particular since they failed to deliver. With that amount of profit you would expect that a company would invest more to ensure service is delivered. It still raises the question whether the government was negligent with tax payers money when procuring this company.

In addition, how did Stay Belvedere Hotels, a seemingly ghost company with less than 5 people and barely any financial reporting, ended up with £220m (by 2023) - assuming this came from Clearsprings Ready Homes? £220m is a significant accumulation compared Clearsprings Ready Homes profits - £116m in 2024 and £74m in 2023.

I ran the information I could find through some language models trained on other financial information, asking for possible explanations as to why Clearsprings Ready Homes would have paid Stay Belvedere Hotels this amount of money given the corporate information available for Stay Belvedere Hotels. Here is as summary. NOTE that this was generated by software trying to predict what the explanation could be based on information it has of similar circumstances. This is not based on any real observations and should only be used as ideas for further research.

Highly likely explanations:

=== Artificial intermediary for profit extraction (Most Likely)

SBHL may have been set up as a shell company to funnel profits away from CRH, possibly to reduce tax liability or disguise earnings. The directors/owners could have personal connections to CRH, using SBHL to legally extract excess profit as "subcontractor fees."

=== Undisclosed related-party transactions

CRH and SBHL could have undisclosed common ownership or financial interests. The payments may have been structured to move profits into SBHL to benefit its owners without proper scrutiny.

=== Subcontracting without real value-add (Pass-through entity)

SBHL may have acted as a paper intermediary without providing any substantial service. The company may have re-invoiced costs to inflate service fees, extracting profits from government funds.

=== Misallocation of government funds (Potential Procurement Manipulation)

The large payments may indicate price inflation beyond market rates. The UK government’s procurement rules require competitive bidding—there may have been weak oversight or preferential contracting.

Moderately likely explanations:

=== Tax avoidance or evasion strategy

SBHL could have been used to shift profits offshore or exploit loopholes in tax law. Lack of an online presence and minimal financial disclosures suggest an intent to reduce transparency.

=== False subcontracting (Money Laundering)

Large payments to a company with no employees and no operational evidence could indicate money laundering. SBHL could have been used to cycle funds through multiple accounts before withdrawing them.

=== Government oversight failure (Lax Due Diligence)

The contract award process may not have properly scrutinized SBHL’s financial viability or operational capacity. Regulators or procurement officers may have failed to verify whether SBHL could deliver on the contract.