Abolishing a public body in practice

The National Citizen Service (NCS) was a programme of experiences for young people in England, designed to promote social cohesion, engagement and mobility. Set up in 2011, its institutional history has been complex – reflecting the competing demands of financial and operational accountability to government alongside the need for creativity and independence to enthuse young people. Lessons from how its governance has changed over the years formed a case study in our report on How to set up a public body. ²² Gill M and Bishop M How to set up a public body, Institute for Government, 20 November 2024, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/how-to-set-up-a-public-body

When that report was published in November 2024, the government had just announced the NCS’s abolition. Subsequently, its leadership team used the Institute’s report How to abolish a public body (2023) ²³ Dalton G, Amos N and Gill M, How to abolish a public body: Ten lessons from previous restructures, Institute for Government, 8 March 2023, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/abolish-public-bodies  to inform their handling of the closure process, and to document lessons learned afterwards.

Here, we summarise the key lessons from the closure. We also publish the NCS’s own closure report, which contains more detail to support those involved in future abolitions; this is found at the foot of this page.

Three key lessons are foregrounded by the NCS experience

The closure report, written by the NCS team involved, identifies three key lessons from the closure. All of these were anticipated in the Institute’s prior work, but come into sharper focus in light of their experience:

1) Strategic planning

At the time abolition was announced, it was not intended for the functions of the NCS to be directly replaced. A National Youth Strategy was published over a year later, in December 2025, ²⁴ Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Youth Matters: Your National Youth Strategy, GOV.UK, 10 December 2025, www.gov.uk/government/publications/youth-matters-your-national-youth-strategy  and the government has since set out to procure delivery partners to support local authorities in providing youth support ²⁵ Department for Culture, Media and Sport, ‘Young Futures Hubs and Transformation Programme’, 8 July 2026, GOV.UK, www.gov.uk/guidance/young-futures-hubs-and-transformation-programme  and to administer a £416.8m Youth Matters Fund. ²⁶ Department for Culture, Media and Sport, ‘Youth Matters Fund: delivery partner competition’, 10 July 2025, GOV.UK, www.gov.uk/government/publications/youth-matters-fund-delivery-partner-competition  These partners might – or might not – have benefitted from a continuation of NCS Trust systems and expertise. But we will never know, because clear future plans were not developed before existing programmes were axed.

The apparent lack of a detailed business case for the abolition, ²⁷ Gill M and Dalton G, When should public bodies exist?: Rewriting the ‘three tests’ for when government does things at arm’s length, Institute for Government, 12 July 2023, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/public-bodies-tests  alongside failure to consider the interconnectedness of the NCS with the wider youth support ecosystem, also resulted in unintended consequences – including, for example, the failure of valued partner organisations. Without proper analysis in advance, it is possible to miss the respects in which a public body functions not only as a delivery programme in its own right, but an anchor or co-ordinating institution essential to its wider field.

2) Workforce transition

A combination of parliamentary protocol, short timelines and cross-government value for money requirements made it very difficult to give staff either advance notice of the abolition or enhanced redundancy settlements. As a result, there was limited opportunity to consider how public assets could be mothballed or transferred (including, for instance, delivery expertise, digital systems and research evidence). The ability to communicate with staff more transparently and to recognise their contributions could have improved staff retention and engagement in the remaining time for which they were needed.

3) Decision-making structures and processes

Once the wind-down commenced, NCS and staff at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) swiftly established the legislative requirements of closure, the accountability structures to be maintained throughout transition, and effective collaboration processes. ²⁸ National Citizen Service, Joint Statement by the NCS Trust Board and DCMS, GOV.UK, 8 July 2025, www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-citizen-service-trust-minutes-of-the-june-2025-board-meeting-and-joint-statement  They achieved this despite a lack of clear government guidance or access to an experienced transition team. 

It was a fortunate coincidence that the interim CEO of the NCS had prior wind-down experience. As our research identified, public body abolitions are large transformation programmes requiring specialist expertise – and prior experience – to be brought in from the start. Building an appropriate transition team quickly should be a key plank of any abolition plan.

Effective abolitions take time as well as expertise

The closure report concludes with a table detailing the various consequences of insufficient time being available to plan an orderly wind-down of NCS activities. While many of these points are NCS-specific, some of the themes – including for example the lack of time to fully evaluate whether any systems would be of value to maintain for government more widely, or to work out how to achieve best value when exiting contracts – illustrate why timescales for future abolitions should be informed by operational as well as political realities.

The centre of government should support public body abolitions better

The closure report assesses the NCS closure process against each of more general lessons set out by the Institute in How to abolish a public body. This leads to some granular recommendations, for instance, on what the Cabinet Office should include in the more detailed guidance we recommended that it develop in relation to public body abolitions. 

A properly resourced central team in the Cabinet Office or elsewhere should be given the capacity to develop such guidance. Until that happens, the NCS closure report shows once again that public body closures require careful strategic and operational planning for their system-wide impact and the smooth transition of any ongoing functions. Those tasked with these important projects should refer to it – alongside our own reports.