Departments must have, or be able to access, the skills, expertise and capacity needed through the whole lifecycle of any intervention in a company, including to prepare for and respond to company distress scenarios.56 We have repeatedly highlighted longstanding issues with a lack of specialist skills in the civil service and the challenges with attracting and retaining specialist staff.57 We recently found in our 2023 Bulb Energy report that the need for commercial and corporate finance skil...

Departments must have, or be able to access, the skills, expertise and capacity needed through the whole lifecycle of any intervention in a company, including to prepare for and respond to company distress scenarios.56 We have repeatedly highlighted longstanding issues with a lack of specialist skills in the civil service and the challenges with attracting and retaining specialist staff.57 We recently found in our 2023 Bulb Energy report that the need for commercial and corporate finance skills across government has increased but these are in limited supply.58 We highlighted the importance of all departments being able to access these skills Type: conclusion | Number: 21 | Response status: accepted Government response: 5.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: April 2025 5.2 The Government Commercial Functional Standard refers to ‘Sourcing Playbook’ guidance regarding the monitoring of the supplier financial standing and identifying an