Key challenges for Agencies and NDPBs

PwC has unparalleled experience of working with the UK public sector. We understand the many pressures it faces including the need to demonstrate value, productivity, customer-centricity, innovation and partnership working.

More particularly, we have developed a deep understanding of the challenges faced by Agencies, Non Departmental Public Bodies and similar organisations in bridging the gap between departmental policy imperatives and the practical and operational challenges of delivery. Many Agencies and NDPBs have demonstrated innovation and resourcefulness in tackling these issues, sometimes identifying ground breaking approaches from which the wider public sector can learn.

We see Agencies and NDPBs as critical to successful public service delivery and in response have developed a new team dedicated to this client grouping. This team will draw on PwC’s wider public sector capacity (we have well over a thousand professionals dedicated to the public sector), but tailor it to the individual needs of Agencies and NDPBs.

Our research last year with Agency / NDPB chief executives and project experience suggests that the challenges you face fall into two main categories:

Operational delivery, where your issues include:

• Cost management
• Outsourcing
• Making the best use of ICT
• Delivering customer-orientated services
• Tax, VAT and assurance

The specific challenges of working as an Agency or NDPB, where your issues include:

• Balancing the expectations and demands of government departments and customers
• Reforming and improving long-established ways of working
• Demonstrating real value and delivery expertise in a challenging and constantly changing environment

We intend to build on last year’s research and the workshops that we are running this year for Agency / NDPB finance directors by organising a new series of workshops targeted at chief executives. Our intention is to promote networking and the emergence of a community which can share the challenges you face and the responses you are developing. We also aim to develop long term relationships with your sector and to develop a central source of capability and excellence to service your needs.

You can contact our dedicated Agency / NDPB team via: Chris Snell, Tom Hampshire or Sean Glancy