The contingency is unfunded and the reform fund is small

The plan includes a contingency but describes it as unfunded, so the money is not yet available to absorb overruns or new requirements. Its £500 million modernization fund is intended to pay for exit costs, process changes, contract breakage, and system upgrades that should later produce savings. That fund is about one 596th of the roughly £298 billion four-year budget. The scale raises doubt that it can finance all the upfront work required for the promised reforms.