KPMG and EY win up to £456m in UK civil service training contracts as government moves skills in-house
The Cabinet Office has directly awarded KPMG and EY contracts with a combined maximum value of £456 million including VAT to provide civil service training until March 2028
he UK Cabinet Office has awarded KPMG and EY civil service training contracts with a combined maximum value of £456 million including VAT, even as the government moves towards an in-house model intended to reduce reliance on external training providers. KPMG’s contract is worth up to £319.2 million, while EY’s is worth up to £136.8 million, both.
The contracts will run from 31 August 2026 to 31 March 2028 and can be used by government departments, executive agencies and other central government bodies. The procurement notice says the training will cover areas including digital and artificial intelligence, leadership and management. The stated values are maximum estimates: the Cabinet Office has given no guarantee over how much work will ultimately be ordered under either contract.
Both contracts were made as direct awards. KPMG and EY already provide civil service learning services under existing arrangements that were due to expire in January 2027. The Cabinet Office said the new contracts will replace those agreements and support a faster transition to the government’s planned National School of Government and Public Services. Changing suppliers during the transition would have been disruptive, according to the department.
The government announced the new National School in January, saying it would bring more civil service training in-house, align skills development with priorities such as AI and reduce spending on external providers over time. The Cabinet Office says ministers have since decided to accelerate the transition in order to improve value for money sooner.
The awards come as the government is also seeking to reduce its wider reliance on consultants. A Cabinet Office spokesperson told Civil Service World that the KPMG and EY contracts were for training services rather than consultancy, and said consultancy costs had fallen by more than £600 million last year to their lowest level in five years. The government remains committed to halving consultancy spending.
That distinction comes amid continuing scrutiny of how government measures its use of external advisers. In March, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee said the Cabinet Office was unable to demonstrate that its target to halve consultancy spending was an effective way of reducing expenditure on external providers, and raised concerns over the reliability and consistency of government consultancy-spending data.
The new training arrangements are unusually large by Big Four public-sector contracting standards. According to Tussell data reported by the Financial Times, the £456 million ceiling makes the KPMG-EY award the largest single contract awarded to Big Four firms since Tussell’s records began in 2012.
Big Four firms have been awarded contracts with a combined maximum value of £1.25 billion so far in 2026, already exceeding the £1.06 billion awarded during the whole of 2025. Those figures represent contract awards rather than necessarily the amount ultimately spent.
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