The Consultancy Playbook: how government should buy and manage consultants

The key facts

• Version 1.1 of the Consultancy Playbook was published in September 2022 by the Cabinet Office, co-developed by the Government Consulting Hub and the Markets, Sourcing and Suppliers team.
• It applies to all central government departments and their arm's length bodies, and should be taken into account by local authorities and the wider public sector.
• The Playbook forms part of the Sourcing Playbook, and its principles apply on a comply or explain basis, proportionate to the value, scope and duration of the engagement.
• Consultancy is defined as the provision of advice to fill a knowledge gap, time limited, delivered by people outside the client organisation's structure and staffing establishment.
• Consultancy should only be used to fill capability gaps that internal resources cannot provide. Capacity shortages are better suited to contingent labour.
• In line with PPN 06/20, social value should be explicitly evaluated and form a minimum of 10 per cent of the evaluation criteria.
• Off payroll working rules (IR35) can apply to consultancy engagements, with greater risk where consultants are integrated within Civil Service teams or work beyond pure advice into implementation.
• Version 1.1 adds an SME Roadmap, an OKUA roles and responsibilities model, updated guidance on long term contracting models, and a companion Knowledge and Skills guidance note.

What the Playbook is and who it applies to

The Consultancy Playbook is government guidance on how to commission and engage consultants more effectively, with three stated aims: better outcomes, better value for money, and support for Civil Service capability through the creation of knowledge and skills. The original was launched in May 2021 by the Government Commercial Function and the Government Consulting Hub. Version 1.1, dated September 2022, keeps the same emphasis on getting things right at the start and adds refreshed guidance in several areas.

Scope is broad. The guidance applies to all central government departments and their arm's length bodies when considering going to market for any consultancy services, and it says local authorities and the wider public sector should take it into account. It sits within the Sourcing Playbook, so the principles, guidelines and rules of that document still apply alongside it. Contracting authorities are also asked to consider applying the guidance when sourcing professional services more generally.

Consultancy itself is defined narrowly and deliberately: the provision of advice to fill a knowledge gap, whether identifying options and recommendations or assisting with implementing solutions, and always time limited. The consultants delivering the service operate outside the client organisation's structure and staffing establishment. Because requirements vary so much, the Playbook is applied on a comply or explain basis and should be applied proportionately to value, scope and duration.

The audience is explicitly cross functional. It is aimed at commercial, finance, project delivery, HR, policy and other professionals in contracting authorities and industry, and it notes that ministers, permanent secretaries, accounting officers, commercial directors, project sponsors and senior responsible owners will find it useful when acting as decision makers, approvers or assurers. The OKUA model maps ownership, knowledge, understanding and awareness across those functions for each key stage.

Right at the start: delivery model, workforce planning and the GCH

The Playbook's central discipline is that consultancy should only be used to fill specific gaps that internal resources cannot provide, such as expertise so specialised that it would be inappropriate to hold it within the Civil Service. Internal options should be exhausted first. That includes reusing existing knowledge, tools and methodologies, and critically considering whether the work could be delivered by the authority's own business unit or another Civil Service team.

Four steps are set out for the start of any requirement. Workforce planning comes first: authorities should regularly review their workforce requirements and pipeline of work, reference their strategic workforce plan when resourcing needs arise, and involve Strategic Business Planning teams and HR early, including in internal assurance for consultancy spend. Second, knowledge: authorities should consider what knowledge needs to be generated, and check whether existing toolkits, methodologies, reports, case studies or comparable projects elsewhere in government already answer part of the requirement.

Third and fourth are the Government Consulting Hub. The GCH is rolling out a cross government triage service that helps teams refine the problem statement, consider whether it could be answered differently, identify internal delivery options, improve specifications and support internal capability building. Teams should contact the GCH or their commercial teams at the earliest possible stage. The GCH also operates as an internal consultancy team taking on assignments across government, maintaining a network of internal advisory teams and co-sourcing with the external market.

The Playbook also draws a sharp line between consultancy and contingent labour. Consultancy is characterised by advice provided outside the business as usual environment, skills or data not available in house, time limited engagements, defined deliverables and supplier responsibility for meeting them. Contingent labour is characterised by named individuals filling a role that exists within the organisation, used for capacity rather than capability shortages, with the client retaining day to day management responsibility. Project teams are told to seek commercial and HR advice early on which model fits.

Setting the procurement up, IR35 and spend controls

If external consultants are the right model, the Playbook sets out what to settle before going to market: a clear understanding of overall project outcomes so deliverables can be specified, the type of consultancy needed and where it sits on the advice to delivery spectrum, early engagement with commercial, finance and legal functions including Crown Commercial Service where appropriate, a plan for incorporating and incentivising knowledge generation and skills transfer, and a firm grasp of governance including senior responsible owner responsibilities and escalation procedures.

Scale and structure matter. Engagements should be time limited with clearly defined deliverables and disaggregated appropriately. Large mixed requirements should be broken into suitable lots to match firms' expertise and to open access to suppliers of all sizes, and the Playbook warns that lotting must not be used to avoid control thresholds. Where umbrella contracts or delivery partner arrangements are used, the authority must understand the difference between its capability and capacity gaps, apply governance to individual call offs, keep call offs specific and linked to the specification deliverables, and consider a Statements of Work solution through CCS where the real problem is capacity.

Off payroll working rules receive their own treatment. IR35 can apply to consultancy engagements depending on the arrangements and supply chain, for example where the consultant personally performs services for the client, contracts through a qualifying intermediary such as a personal service company, or works in a manner that would be treated as employment for tax purposes. Risk is greater where consultants are integrated within Civil Service teams or where civil servants and consultants collaborate to deliver outcomes together, and greater still where the consultant moves beyond advice into implementation or delivery. IR35 should be assessed case by case with specialist advice, including from the Tax Centre of Excellence.

Finally, authorities are told to always check whether the requirement falls within Cabinet Office spend controls for consultancy spend, and to refer to the latest guidance on scope, thresholds and process.

Going to market: specifications, evaluation and routes

The Playbook wants procurements structured so the market can offer effective and innovative solutions. That means working collaboratively with industry without unfairly excluding SMEs, shifting the focus of requirements to overall outcomes, structuring specifications and evaluation criteria to allow unique responses without being overly prescriptive, and including the building of government knowledge and capability as a core requirement whenever consultants are commissioned.

On specifications, the guidance is direct: move away from input based specifications, which limit creative approaches by dictating how consultants should deliver, and towards outcome based ones framed around the problem to be solved while staying neutral on inputs and process. That approach depends on a strong specification paired with specific, measurable milestones aligned to a project timeline, focused on the areas representing key value adds or risks. The Playbook also acknowledges that a problem based approach can be challenging to administer and says advice should be sought from commercial and legal teams first, with the project team closely involved in drafting.

Evaluation criteria should be concise, avoid repetition and give bidders room for meaningful responses. A perennial complaint from bidders is that consultancy invitations to tender are too prescriptive. The Playbook asks for open questions, an open technical specification with clearly defined deliverables, explicit questions on knowledge and skills transfer, involvement of the project team alongside commercial, legal and finance in drafting the questions, and quality criteria with scoring bands that genuinely differentiate between responses. In line with PPN 06/20, social value should be explicitly evaluated and form a minimum of 10 per cent of the criteria.

Two further points shape the market approach. Low cost bids should not be able to bypass quality: evaluation should balance quality and price, and all bids should have to meet a quality threshold to be considered. And routes to market should reflect that consultancies are not interchangeable. The Playbook lists strategy, organisational design, technology, engineering, science based and operational improvement specialists, and warns against defaulting to known suppliers when the real need is a subject matter expert in a specific sector, who is often less expensive than generic advice. Market engagement, including notifications, expressions of interest, requests for information and supplier days, plus published pipelines of current and future contracts, is how authorities find them.

How eSourcing Data helps

Much of the Playbook is about evidencing decisions before spend happens: that internal options were exhausted, that the delivery model was chosen deliberately, that market engagement was proportionate, and that knowledge transfer was specified rather than assumed. eSourcing Data gives teams a structured place to record that reasoning alongside the procurement itself, so the delivery model assessment, the triage conversation and the workforce planning input sit with the tender documents rather than in scattered email threads.

On going to market, the platform supports the mechanics the Playbook asks for: publishing notices and pipelines so suppliers of all sizes can plan resources, running structured pre market engagement such as requests for information and supplier days, managing clarification questions in one auditable place, and building evaluation models with weighted quality criteria, scoring bands and a defined social value percentage. Because knowledge and skills transfer is meant to be a scored requirement rather than a nice to have, it can be carried through as a named criterion from specification to evaluation to contract deliverable.

Supplier management and reporting cover the manage phase. Spend data capture, lot level and call off level records, and consistent contract information make it easier to see how much consultancy an organisation is buying, from whom, and whether repeat purchases point to a capability gap that should be filled internally. Below threshold and lower value engagements can follow the same light touch workflow, which matters because the Playbook applies proportionately rather than only to large contracts. The judgement about whether to buy consultancy at all remains the authority's, but the record supporting that judgement can be complete.

What to do about it

1. 1Before requesting external consultancy, document the internal options considered, including other Civil Service teams, existing toolkits, methodologies and comparable prior work.
2. 2Check your strategic workforce plan and involve HR and Strategic Business Planning early, and contact the Government Consulting Hub triage service at the earliest possible stage.
3. 3Decide explicitly whether the need is a capability gap suited to consultancy or a capacity shortage better met by contingent labour or a Statements of Work solution.
4. 4Assess IR35 case by case, especially where consultants will be integrated with civil servants or move beyond advice into implementation, and take specialist tax advice.
5. 5Write outcome based specifications framed around the problem, with measurable milestones, and include knowledge and skills transfer as a specified, scored deliverable.
6. 6Build evaluation criteria with open questions, scoring bands, a quality threshold that stops low cost bids bypassing quality, and social value at a minimum of 10 per cent.
7. 7Break large mixed requirements into lots that match firms' expertise, publish a pipeline, and confirm whether the requirement falls within Cabinet Office consultancy spend controls.