The United Kingdom Government has released plans for a Public Service ‘consulting hub’, intended to reduce its reliance on external management consultants.
A recent Treasury minute described the hub as consisting of “a highly capable, respected cadre of Civil Servants providing a centre of expertise for Government on commissioning and working with consultants”.
The Treasury said the hub could be up and running within a year, with the consulting experts deployed to lend extra skills and capacity to Departments and projects that needed them.
“A strategic triage process for the hub is in development now, with a pilot expected imminently,” the Treasury said.
“The pilot will inform a longer-term business case for likely implementation in 2021-22,” it said.
The hub is one strand of a plan to shore up skills in the Public Service and reduce the need to call in costly external help.
“The Cabinet Office recognises that results can be suboptimal when consulting firms are engaged without a clear idea of the desired outcome,” the Treasury said.
“The Government is ensuring that spending proposals build in the requirement that consultants pass on their skills and learning to Civil Servants at the end of the engagement to avoid repeated use on similar challenges,” it said.
The plans were revealed in response to a recommendation from Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee to consider, and come up with, a strategy to reduce the cost of plugging Public Service skills gaps with management consultants.
The December report in which the recommendation was made said the Government had consistently failed to address a lack of specialist skills in the Public Service, leading to waste, delays, budgetary overruns and an over-reliance on management consultancies.
London, 12 March 2021
