The Cabinet Office told us that it did not produce a business case for its current strategy as it believed time was of the essence in terms of both cost opportunities and the fact that old systems were coming to the end of their contracts. It did not want to “put the cart before the horse” in terms of the detailed work needed on costs and benefits and felt that this would be better done at the cluster level.15 Instead, it produced a “Case for Change” which lacked the requisite level of detail on costs, benefits and risks.16 As part of the 2021 Spending Review, three clusters submitted bids, totalling £759 million, to HM Treasury for funding to deliver the Shared Services Strategy.17 HM Treasury rejected all three bids due to concerns that the Cabinet Office and clusters had not done enough work to develop robust cost estimates or to consider fundamental elements of the strategy, including governance arrangements and cluster design.18