Recommendation 38

In February 2023, 223 (62%) of the 361 positions in the NHP team were filled by consultants. Consultants outnumbered permanent employees by roughly two to one. Over the period from April 2021 to March 2023, £70 million (79%) of the NHP’s total day- to-day expenditure went on consultancy services.83 DHSC told us that it had to choose between making an extremely slow start to the programme, with just those individuals it could recruit, or to start with a larger amount of external consultancy support. It told us it expected later to make a transition to a new operating model, suggesting it would rely less on external support in future.84