Operational Plan April 2025 – March 2026

Given the Grant-in-aid income for 2025-26 will be £4.436m (rounded) we have projected expenditure as follows which we will be spent to support the delivery of the 2025/26 agreed workplan. The table below shows the total expected income and expenditure for the 2025/26 financial year, and the split between the expected staff costs and other costs. 

79% of our costs are attributed to staffing: we start April 2025/26 with 52 permanent members of staff. We have a number of vacancies (which are contained within the budget) on hold at present as we define and map out and finalise our resourcing plans for 2025/26.

‘Other costs’ include services provided by various partners such as procurement, IT, finance and legal (see Annex A). This budget expenditure has considerably reduced over the last three years due to the in-housing of a number of functions including Finance and Procurement. It also covers other costs such as the provision of a Leadership Academy, Digital Summit, and events as per the agreed events strategy for 2025/26. 

The table below shows the breakdown of predicted 2025/26 spend on staff and other costs by financial quarter.

The table below illustrates staff costs and % against total grant income including estimated carry over from 2024/25 is spent across individual teams within CDPS.

The table above outlines staffing numbers over the year, against each quarter.

We have profiled the spend across the following broad categories in the annual budget: 

1. Delivery and UCD costs – to cover work on delivery projects of Benefits and Planning and also other areas of workplan including platforms, patterns, service assessments and tech net zero. 
2. Skills and Capabilities – to cover work on our Leadership Academy, workforce strategy, SCS training and AI guidance.
3. Technology – as set out above, we have budgeted to bring in some Technology resource later in the year in line with our workplan requirements.
4. Communications and the Connect service – to cover work on our Corporate Communications, promoting and sharing best practice, working in the open, and bringing people together to connect share and learn (through our events and communities of practice) and to tell the story of our delivery.
5. Standards and Product – to cover work on our Standards and service assessments and training and also other areas of the workplan including Digi ID, Domains
6. Operations Costs – to support the organisation to deliver on its objectives including People, Finance, Governance, Business Support and Procurement. 
7. Office of the CEO – costs to cover the Exec Support and CEO roles. 

During 2025/26 we have a Memorandum of Understanding with WG for a further £260k funding to support additional work on the Planning project which is non-core grant so has not been included in the above budget. The non-core grant will be spent on labour to deliver the project objectives (likely to be a mix of contractor and recruitment of permanent staff).

We are also conducting an Alpha project phase for Neurodiversity which is non-core grant funded (£50k approx.) and will end in May and is being completed by an external contractor.