‘Resets’ are a natural part of major long-term projects and can help them to succeed, says universal credit Senior Responsible Owner

However, Neil Couling tells Public Accounts Committee that the universal credit programme’s reset was a traumatic event for staff who saw it as a failure

'Resets' are a natural part of major long-term projects and can help them to succeed, the Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) for universal credit, Neil Couling, has told the Public Accounts Committee.

Following the publication of Lessons learned: Resetting major programmes by the National Audit Office (NAO) in March 2023, the Public Accounts Committee held an evidence session yesterday – with Mr Couling and other SROs from the Department of Transport and the Ministries of Justice and Defence – to examine their experiences of programme resets and to consider the challenges faced and support needed when making substantial changes to a major project.

NB – the NAO advises that a programme reset may be needed where internal or external factors mean a major programme can no longer achieve its intended outcomes, or it is too costly to do so. The universal credit programme was reset in early 2013 and was followed up by the NAO in September 2013 and November 2014

Asked about his experience of the resetting of universal credit, Mr Couling acknowledged that the project was in real trouble at the time, but that the reset could be seen as a useful tool –

'… a bit like … free parking in Monopoly where you can just draw breath, let the game proceed a bit, try to gather some rents and fines and things off your fellow players and summon up the courage to try and get round the next bit of the board.'

While Mr Couling added that the reset was experienced as 'quite a traumatic event' at the time, particularly by programme staff, as details were kept very confidential and they saw it as a failure, he said that where there is –

'… some openness, some acceptance … [the] process can actually be helpful and help projects to ultimately succeed.'

In addition, while accepting that universal credit was meant to be in place by 2017, Mr Couling suggested that resets are a 'natural experience' in long-term major projects as events happen and generate change –

'You can't freeze politics and you can't freeze what's happening in the world … So, for example in 2015, we went from coalition to Conservative … it was a massive change in that the Conservatives were elected on a promise to reduce welfare … that just wasn't in the universal credit plan as of 2015.'

Mr Couling added that this – and other events such as Brexit, the devolvement of benefits to Scotland, and Covid – had in fact led to him resetting the programme several times over the years. However, due to the previous experiences of staff, he 'never used the R word inside the Department', he said.

Turning to the leadership of any reset process, Mr Couling stressed the importance of thinking carefully about whether a separate reset team is established and, if it is, returning leadership to the SRO as soon as possible. Referencing his own personal experience in the role, Mr Couling said –

'Come October, I'll be entering my 10th year here as an SRO. I think that it helped I was a Director General and I decided that I didn't want to become a Permanent Secretary. So this is what I wanted to do with my career – deliver universal credit. That's what drove me.'

The evidence session on resetting government programmes can be seen at parliamentlive.tv