Recommendation 27

Focusing on the future, we were keen to understand whether the lessons learned from the pandemic were being turned into plans that could be safely stored and, if necessary, taken off the shelf to help in a future emergency.66 This committee has commented before on the impact that staff turnover has on skills and experience in key departments. Three of our four witnesses had not been in post at the start of the pandemic, and one of the two departments giving evidence to us was a recent product of Machinery of Government changes.67 DBT told us that its grants champion is working with a community of grant specialists across government and with the government grants lead, in the Cabinet Office. DBT was clear that lessons and ideas from DBT are being fed into the Cabinet Office, which seeks to ensure consistency of grant management and grant delivery across Whitehall.68 59 Q 79; C&AG’s Report, para 2.5 60 Qq 11, 37, 79 61 Qq 79–81 62 Q 37 63 Q 90 64 C&AG’s Report, para 2.25 65 Qq 102–105 66 Qq 82–84; 91–96 67 Qq 1–4, 108 68 Qq 93–55 16 Local authority administered COVID support schemes in England