Government continues to spend too much on consultants to undertake work that could be better done by civil servants, and does not do enough to utilise or develop skills and experience in-house. At the peak, more than 22,000 civil servants worked on EU exit, and at present that number is around 15,000. The civil service responded to this demand by moving staff between departments—two thirds of staff in DExEU came on secondment from other departments. A similar approach has been taken on a larg...

Government continues to spend too much on consultants to undertake work that could be better done by civil servants, and does not do enough to utilise or develop skills and experience in-house. At the peak, more than 22,000 civil servants worked on EU exit, and at present that number is around 15,000. The civil service responded to this demand by moving staff between departments—two thirds of staff in DExEU came on secondment from other departments. A similar approach has been taken on a larger scale to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. There has been high turnover among staff working on EU Exit, particularly at senior levels. Government has Type: recommendation | Number: 3 | Response status: not_addressed Government response: 3. 1 The government disagrees with this recommendation. 3.2 Please refer to the department’s response to recommendation 4. 3.3 The government agrees with this recommendation. Target implementation date: March 2021 3.4 The government has established a programme