Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Conclusion 6
48th Report - Smarter delivery of public services
Published 22 Oct 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Smarter delivery of public services All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The Surge and Rapid Response Team (SRRT) is a valuable resource but should be there for genuine need and not as a containment for the lack of operational capability needed to deal with demand that should have been predicted or absorbed. The capability to understand and deal with demand is a key priority for government organisations. The ODP is responsible for the SRRT, which helps departments deal with significant increases in demand, including seasonal peaks such as Winter Fuel payments, as well as those caused by emerging crises, such as the collapse of an airline. A benefit of using the SRRT is that its staff can be deployed immediately–for example, they are already security cleared and have contracts allowing them to be deployed nationally and internationally at short notice. Whereas recruiting staff or using a third party could be more time consuming and costly. The SRRT is clearly a valuable resource, and there are many examples of its successful deployment, but departments should not be repeatedly using the SRRT for peaks in demand that ought to have been foreseen and planned for, or which could have been absorbed in other ways. recommendation The ODP should conduct analysis of who is using the SRRT and why they are using it to identify where they need to work with departments to increase their operational capability to better deal with variation in demand. 6 1 The role of the Operational Delivery Profession and its members Introduction
From: Public Accounts Committee, 48th Report - Smarter delivery of public services (HC 889), 22 October 2025
Government response
Latest Treasury Minutes progress report to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Forty-eighth Report of Session 2024-26
The government responded to the whole report on 4 June 2026 (deadline 22 December 2025).
Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Forth-eighth report from Session 2024-26
Published 19 January 2026.
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The Operational Delivery Profession states that it "agrees with the Committee's recommendation" on each of the six recommendations, giving target dates for four and describing two as already implemented.
- On external visibility, the Profession agrees and gives a target implementation date of September 2026; its annual business plan will include metrics on profile-raising, with the 2025-26 plan "due to be shared by August 2026".
- On joining up with local government and the private sector, the Profession agrees and describes the recommendation as "implemented", citing sharing of its Professional Skills Framework and Centre of Excellence access with the wider public sector.
- On monitoring capability, the Profession says initial measures "will be baselined by September 2026", while recognising "the inherent challenge of evidencing a direct causal relationship" between its activities and outcomes for citizens.
- On digital skills and AI, the Profession agrees, with a target date of December 2026, and says a workforce challenges study is "underway" to identify future skills needs in operational delivery.