The Cabinet Office has awarded two new contracts for civil service training with a combined value of up to £456m over the next 19 months.
According to the department, the deals with blue-chip consultancies KPMG and EY will effectively continue contracts the firms currently hold until the end of March 2028, adding a further 14 months to existing arrangements.
Training offered under the contracts can be drawn upon by departments, arm’s-length bodies and agencies. It includes “priority skills” such as artificial intelligence.
In January this year, then chief secretary to the prime minister Darren Jones announced plans to set up a new National School of Government and Public Services as an in-house “world class” centre for civil service learning and development.
The Cabinet Office says that the extended contracts that have been awarded to KPMG and EY will provide continuity between the current offer and the new National School going live.
The new National School – which will in many ways revive the former National School of Government scrapped under the coalition government in 2012 – had been expected to be fully up and running by 2029. However, procurement documents supporting the extended contracts awarded to KPMG and EY state that ministers are accelerating its delivery. A timescale has yet to be formally announced, however.
The Cabinet Office’s suggestion that the contracts will serve as a “stopgap” between current training arrangements and the new National School indicate the institution could be properly up and running by April 2028.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “These contracts are for training services, not consultancy. As committed in January, we are moving away from outsourced contracts. Our new in-house model, the National School of Government, will reduce reliance on external spending and provide better value for the taxpayer.”
The spokesperson added that the department reduced consultancy costs by more than £600m last year to their lowest level in five years. “We remain fully committed to halving consultancy spend to deliver maximum value for the taxpayer,” they said.
KPMG has the largest slice of the new £456m centralised civil service learning and training contracts. Its share is £319.2m against EY’s £136.8m.
The Cabinet Office argues that the new contracts with KPMG and EY are a significantly reduced version of the contracts planned under the previous government, which it says would have been for roughly £2bn.
The contracts were made as direct awards on the basis that changing suppliers would be disruptive for the civil service in the transition to the new National School.
Back in January, Jones said the costs of the new National School would be “paid for by existing budgets” and “savings recently agreed cross-government to end expensive outsourced contracts for training”.
He added: “The process will not only build the school but also save tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.”
The Cabinet Office’s award notice for its latest contracts says the National School will “drive a new approach to delivering skills across the civil service”.
It says the National School “will be responsible for training across the civil service, providing high quality learning and development, including in priorities such as digital and artificial intelligence, leadership and management”.
The award notice adds: “The minister for the Cabinet Office has decided to accelerate the transition to the National School in order to realise the benefits that it will bring, and improve overall value for money sooner than originally anticipated.”