The soon to be released strategic workforce plan has the potential to be a welcome step to support better use of consultants. The Cabinet Office told us that all departments are complying with requests to update their strategic workforce plans, which will enable Cabinet Office to deliver the government wide strategic workforce plan. By properly considering the pipeline of upcoming work, and assessing the organisation’s staff resources and skills, a department should be able to meet its requirements with existing staff, a new permanent staff member or contingent labour, instead of hiring a consultancy. In some cases, a team may be able to rely on resources elsewhere in government instead of going out to market. However, the lack of a whole government workforce strategy makes it very difficult for departments to look beyond their own resources. Cabinet Office is developing a strategic workforce plan for the civil service, which may address these issues. The Cabinet Office stated that the workforce plan will also include further details on departmental spending limits set by HM Treasury. The Cabinet Office said it will publish the plan but has not confirmed when. recommendation The Cabinet Office should commit to publishing the workforce plan by May 2026. The Committee expects the workforce plan to include an assessment of skills gaps that will require external resources and further details on departmental spending limits. 5 1 Government data and spend on the use of external consultants Introduction