Guidance

Cabinet Office learning and development spend control guidance

Updated 10 April 2024

1. Policy summary

1. The purpose of the Cabinet Office (CO) Learning and Development (L&D) Spend Control is to encourage cross-government collaboration on common training requirements and enable the Civil Service to benefit from the significant economies of scale associated with aggregated demand; enabling smarter learning and development (L&D) buying behaviours and reducing unnecessary/duplicative spending.

2. The Cabinet Office’s Government Skills and Curriculum Unit (GSCU) manages central contracts with commercial learning and development experts that create and provide a range of high-quality training to support and equip civil servants to deliver excellent public services.

3. The central contracts provide organisations with the opportunity to benefit from prices that have been obtained through an OJEU tender process. This has demonstrated that significant savings can be achieved on the design and delivery of training services. In addition, commissioning organisations that use this route can benefit from resource savings in terms of reducing the need to run a separate procurement exercise.

4. The L&D Spend Control will decide what is the best route to market for the requirement. Applicants must clearly define the training need so the application can be directed to the appropriate supplier.

5. The L&D Spend Control will not decide if the training need is necessary because authority and spending accountability rests with departments, professions and functions. The CO will automatically assume that all requirements commissioned through the central L&D contracts have the respective local financial approval.

6. All requirements referred to and commissioned through the central contracts will help to identify emerging L&D needs across the Civil Service and they will be used to inform the Civil Service’s future L&D strategy. This is particularly relevant in the cross Civil Service curriculum space, where one of the GSCU’s aims is to continually review the service offering to meet the changing needs of departments, professions, functions and the wider business.

7. Departments, professions and functions continue to be accountable for spending on L&D and how to monitor spending in their organisations.

1.1 What is the scope of this control?

1. The control applies to all requirements except those listed under ‘What is out of the scope of this control?’. Commissioners of training should refer to the catalogue each time they need to progress a requirement. The catalogue is updated periodically and the commissioner will need to assess whether the new service is already being delivered by the central contracts.

2. When a commissioner requires new services, the £10k spend threshold is the anticipated aggregate spend over the period of requirement. For example, in the case where an organisation needs a service to be put in place for a period of two years, with the option to extend for a further year, the total (estimated) value of the service would be the estimated cost of that service over the three-year period.

3. The services provided by the central contracts are compliant with Cabinet Office Spend Controls requirements. All training commissioned through these contracts will not require any additional approval from the L&D Spend Control team.

4. All training requirements over £10k which departments/professions/functions would like to commission for delivery outside of the central contracts, will require individual Spend Control approval and must follow the New Requirements Form guidance.

Commissioners must provide suppliers with appropriate notice of their new requirements so that suppliers have sufficient opportunity to consider how the requirement can be delivered.

1.2 What is out of the scope of this control?

1. The following are not included within the scope of this control:

• Any L&D requirements under £10k which are domain or sector specific;

• Any Civil Service internally delivered training (such as by Government Academies, departments).

Commissions which fall into the above described categories should be progressed through local procurement at department/ profession/ function level.

1. Conferences, are out of scope and do not need to go through L&D Spend Control/the Learning Frameworks as it is not possible to offer a commercially attractive solution to meet the needs of the Civil Service.

2. Commissioners are no longer required to submit a new requirement form for conference bookings.

   1.3 Process

3. The GSCU has developed a process with central contacts’ suppliers to facilitate the policy needs of Spend Control whilst enabling a better customer experience when accessing the central offer. This is called the New Requirements process and it is based on four key principles which are to:

• Deliver the spend control (ensuring the government is benefitting from its economy of scale by eliminating duplicative spend);
• Deliver the business requirement (ensuring the right training is being delivered by the right provider, at the right quality and the right price);
• Deliver the commercial requirement in line with the commercial strategy, e.g. to support growth and Small Medium Enterprises agenda (ensuring that contracts are being adhered to and that we are driving commercial value through our arrangements); and
• Deliver data that informs the future Civil Service L&D strategy (ensuring the Cross-Civil Service Curriculum meets the changing needs of departments and the wider business).

1. For further information please see the New Requirement Form guidance.

   1.4 Template

2. All new training requests (not available via catalogue) should be submitted using the New Requirements Form.

   1.5 Breaches of Spend Control

3. Breaches of the controls are serious and may be considered as irregular spend. Where breaches occur, the organisation’s accounting officer must notify the National Audit Office (NAO). The Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) may then qualify his or her opinion on the account and the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) may decide to hold an oral hearing.

4. HM Treasury is informed if your organisation does not follow the controls framework, usually after an audit. Your organisation may face financial sanctions to recover any money that is spent without approval.

5. The Cabinet Office will not process requests for retrospective approvals seeking to regularise irregular spending. In the rare scenario where urgency prevents time-critical, unanticipated spend from being approved in the normal fashion, handling should be agreed with the relevant control team.

6. An organisation should not treat a breach of spend controls as providing cover for further non-compliance. If a breach occurs through failure to correctly secure approval for an Outline Business Case (OBC), the organisation is still required to comply with the controls process for the subsequent Full Business Case (FBC).

   1.6 Contacts

7. Queries relating to this control should be directed to the Helpdesk - email support@governmentcampus.co.uk