The Prime Minister has established a sixteen-member taskforce charged with determining the precise function, scope, and deliverables of governmental taskforces, following what Downing Street described as “mounting uncertainty” about whether any of the 247 taskforces launched since 2024 have actually done anything.
The Taskforce Efficacy and Standards Committee, which held its inaugural meeting on Tuesday in a conference room overlooking the Thames, will spend the next eighteen months consulting with stakeholders across the public sector to develop a framework for understanding what taskforces are meant to achieve. The findings will be compiled into a non-binding recommendations document to be submitted to a cross-party review panel sometime in late 2027.
“We recognise that there has been some confusion about the role of taskforces in modern governance,” said Jennifer Holroyd, the Cabinet Office minister appointed to chair the new body. “This taskforce will work collaboratively with communities, businesses, and existing taskforces to really drill down into what we mean when we say we’re setting up a taskforce. We anticipate needing at least three sub-committees.”
The announcement comes amid growing questions about the government’s preferred approach to policy challenges, which has seen the creation of working groups on housing, cost of living, NHS waiting times, and regional inequality, all of which are currently in various stages of consultation, scoping, or initial fact-finding.
The new taskforce will operate on a budget of £3.2 million and will include representatives from local government, the voluntary sector, and two members of the public selected through a process that has not yet been determined. A separate sub-taskforce will be established to decide the selection criteria, though its terms of reference remain under discussion.
“I think we all want clarity on this,” said Martin Pemberton, a civil servant seconded to the taskforce from the Department for Levelling Up and Regeneration, where he previously served on a working group examining the effectiveness of working groups. “At the moment, when we’re asked to join a taskforce, there’s no standardised understanding of whether that means we’ll be making policy, advising on policy, reviewing existing policy, or simply establishing a timeline for future policy review. It’s somewhat inefficient.”
The taskforce will report its preliminary findings in early 2027, at which point the government will consider whether to implement any of its suggestions, launch a consultation on its recommendations, or establish a new taskforce to examine why the original taskforce took so long.
Sources close to the Prime Minister confirmed that he remains absolutely committed to getting things done, and that this taskforce represents an important first step towards eventually working out how to take important first steps.