Comprehensive Spending Review 2015: Delving the details for SITS opportunities

On 25^th November 2015, the UK Government announced the joint Comprehensive Spending Review (for the period from 2016-17 to 2019-20 inclusive) and the Autumn Statement. As he presented to Parliament, Chancellor George Osborne sought to shift the emphasis from ‘rescue’ to ‘rebuild’.

Buoyed by improved finances and better forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility, he was able to make a u-turn on cutting tax credits and protect police budgets in real terms. The alternatives would have been politically unpopular. But that’s not to say we are entering an easier period.

This is a Chancellor sticking to his “fixing the roof while the sun shines” mantra. He still sees a great opportunity to make the machinery of government more efficient, which will lead to an increasing ‘shrinking of the state’. Departmental budgets will continue to shrink over this spending period. The unprotected departments will suffer the most. But even in the priority spending areas, like health and police, the Chancellor still expects efficiency savings to be made so that resources can be redirected to the delivery of frontline services rather than the back-end administration.

In this PublicSectorViews research note, we consider:

• The impact of budget cuts and efficiency savings targets;
• The £1.8b budget for digital transformation and where it will be spent;
• The commitment to ICT-related projects made by departments and agencies and the likely opportunities for SITS suppliers;
• The increased focus on collaboration and which organisations it is likely to affect.

Ways to access this research