Recommendation 15

We also noted that the Plan is only affordable if the Department achieves intended £13.8 billion of savings, £5 billion of which it has not yet developed plans to achieve.39 The Department may be over-optimistic in expecting to achieve all intended cost reductions and efficiency savings.40 In addition, of the savings for which it does not yet have clear plans, the Department must find £2.1 billion of these in the next three years. The Department’s contingency over those three years is only £0.5 billion, which means it has limited ability to absorb any failures to achieve savings, or unexpected cost increases.41