Cabinet Office closes recruitment platform after £7.8m loss
The Cabinet Office has closed a central government recruitment platform, recording a £7.8 million loss, after concerns that departments using shared services preferred recruitment tools in their existing systems. The closure is intended to bring future work into line with the government’s Shared Services Strategy, which aims to standardise software across departments.
The Civil Service Jobs Applicant Tracking System was reset in October 2025, but the department said it had not acted early enough on the adoption concerns. It had previously estimated the reset would cost £26 million to £38 million. Separately, the Cabinet Office estimates it owes £38.5 million in unpaid tax and National Insurance under IR35 rules; after paying £15 million, it had £23.5 million provisioned at year-end. A final settlement is still being negotiated, and HMRC penalties of up to £8.9 million are possible, though the department considers payment unlikely.
- Cabinet Office scraps recruitment system, recording a £7.8 million loss.
- Shared services concerns contributed to the platform’s closure.
- IR35 settlement is under negotiation, with penalties of up to £8.9 million possible.
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The UK government has pursued a "Shared Services Strategy" aimed at reducing costs and improving efficiency by having departments use standardised software rather than each maintaining its own systems. Under this strategy, the Cabinet Office procures and manages shared platforms that multiple departments can use. One such platform was created to handle recruitment across the Civil Service.
Civil Service departments recruit thousands of staff annually, with each department historically managing its own recruitment processes using systems of their choice. The Cabinet Office created a central recruitment platform intended to consolidate this function under a single shared system, theoretically reducing duplication and cost. However, departments that have invested in their own recruitment software and trained staff on those systems often prefer to continue using familiar tools rather than switching to a new central platform.
This preference among departments for their existing systems over newly introduced shared platforms is a recurring challenge in government modernisation efforts. When key users do not adopt a new system as expected, the initial investment fails to deliver intended returns, creating financial losses and raising questions about how best to standardise IT across multiple departments.
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The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
The platform simply was not being adopted by departments, who actively preferred their existing systems. Continuing to fund and maintain a rejected system would constitute genuine waste of taxpayer money. By closing it early and consolidating services onto systems departments actually use, the Cabinet Office made a pragmatic decision that stops the bleeding and redirects resources more efficiently. The Shared Services Strategy's standardisation goal remains sensible, but it must work with departmental reality rather than against it.
The case against
The £7.8 million loss reveals fundamental failure in government IT planning and procurement. Rather than simply abandoning the platform, the Cabinet Office should have investigated why adoption was poor and remedied the root causes—inadequate system functionality, insufficient training, or weak departmental incentives. This closure exemplifies a troubling pattern in which government builds expensive technology projects only to abandon them when implementation proves difficult, suggesting an institutional incapacity to learn from mistakes or sustain strategic initiatives through execution.
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Originally published by The Register as “UK Cabinet Office takes £7.8M hit to kill off recruitment system”.