In recent years, the UK Government (and the Treasury in particular) has adopted efficiency as its public spending North Star. But viewing efficiency as the sole guiding principle for public spending can undermine resilience. Even in good times, this is bad for delivery, but it can have catastrophic consequences when things go wrong.

In January 2023, Nigel Ball and Loic Menzies, the authors of the report, convened a roundtable at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, to explore how a better balance can be struck between efficiency and resilience.

By summarising the discussions from the roundtable, and setting out a number of ideas that emerged from it, the authors hope to contribute to the discussion regarding how policy can shift towards prevention and resilience.