However, DHSC’s actual plans seem to contradict this, indicating an ongoing reliance on external delivery partners to provide professional and technical skills and for specific assignments. It estimates that it will spend £842 million on consultancy services between 2023–24 and 2030–31, which represents 75% of its total day-to-day expenditure for those years.85 Such a reliance in a long-term programme can be very expensive as well as risking a lack of continuity and loss of knowledge.86 DHSC said that many of the consultants would always be necessary but, having firmed up the scope of the programme, it was now starting to recruit towards the planned operating model.87 Transfers of capital funding