Staff morale at Skills England was among the worst in the civil service after the agency was moved to a new department, its first annual accounts reveal. Fewer than half of staff were proud of, felt attached to or would recommend the agency as a great place to work. Skills England’s score of 46 per cent on the 2025 civil service people survey engagement index was 19 percentage points lower than the last one recorded by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE), the body it replaced. Only one of the 105 civil service organisations in the published survey results had a lower rating. IfATE scored 65.3 per cent in the 2024 survey. The Department for Education, which sponsored Skills England for the whole of the reporting period covered in the accounts, scored 65.5 per cent in the 2025 survey. The civil service median was 64.9 per cent. Staff completed the survey between September 23 and October 21. Prime minister Keir Starmer had laid a written ministerial statement on September 16 confirming that Skills England, along with responsibility for apprenticeships, adult skills, training and careers, would move from the DfE to the Department for Work and Pensions with immediate effect. The index is the Cabinet Office’s headline measure of how staff feel about their employer. It’s based on five survey questions covering: whether staff are proud to tell people who they work for, would recommend the organisation as a great place to work, feel a strong personal attachment to it, find it inspires them to do their best, and find it motivates them to help meet its objectives. Every civil service organisation is measured the same way. Skills England took on IfATE’s staff and functions when it was created on June 2, 2025, along with the DfE’s analysis, insight and regions teams. The agency did not take part in the people survey in its own right, so its score does not appear in the published benchmark results. Of the 105 organisations listed for 2025, only the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory scored lower, on 42.8 per cent. Fifty-nine per cent of Skills England staff completed the survey, against 82 per cent at IfATE in 2024 and 80 per cent at the DfE in 2025. Skills England’s own risk register linked the pressure on staff to the machinery of government change. Workforce gaps, evolving structures and uncertainty “were heightened during the transition to the DWP and the introduction of new operational processes”, the accounts said, risking “staff uncertainty, affecting morale and retention”. Neither chair Phil Smith’s foreword nor that of joint chief executives Sarah Maclean and Tessa Griffiths mentioned the move to the DWP. Smith did write that Skills England “aspires to be the grease in the wheel that gets the skills system turning, achieving growth and spreading opportunity”. The agency rated its risk register as “improving” by the end of the year, saying recruitment processes had stabilised and transition activity had become “more predictable”. IfATE had been more upbeat about its own result. Reporting its fifth and final People Survey in its 2024-25 accounts, it noted its 2024 score was unchanged on 2023 and a point above the civil service benchmark. “Given the significant amount of change IfATE has experienced this year, our results paint a positive picture of the resilience and determination of IfATE and its people,” it said. At that time, IfATE was being abolished. The government announced Skills England in July 2024, IfATE’s staff filled in the survey that autumn, and the abolition bill received royal assent in May 2025. A Skills England spokesperson said: “Our staff survey results are very important to us and improving employee engagement will continue to be a priority for us in the coming year. “Since the survey was conducted, staff have formally moved across to the Department for Work and Pensions. We are already seeing the positive impact this has had on our ability to do what we are most passionate about – changing lives through apprenticeships and other skills products that deliver more for young people and employers.” Other findings Skills England’s net operating expenditure was £30.4 million for the ten-month period, which works out at around £36.5 million annualised. IfATE spent £28.7 million in its final full year to March 2025. The figures are not directly comparable, however. Skills England’s total included £7.8 million of local skills improvement plan (LSIP) grants to employer representative bodies, which IfATE did not manage. IfATE’s final expenditure tally included £1.4 million of T Level contract delivery costs, which Skills England does not do. Without those, Skills England and IfATE had similar total expenditure figures at £27.1 million annualised and £27.3 million respectively. Elsewhere in the accounts, we learned Skills England employed an average of 257 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff, fewer than IfATE’s 285 in its final year, with 233 permanent staff on the books at year-end. Staff costs worked out at roughly £82,400 per FTE annualised, almost identical to IfATE’s £82,361. The accounts also showed recruitment stalled after the September announcement. Budget forecasting was knocked off course by “slower-than-expected recruitment to the approved staffing complement, following the machinery of government announcement”, and expenditure came in “lower than expected”. Skills England paid five exit packages worth £239,000 in the ten-month period, three of them worth between £50,001 and £100,000. None were compulsory redundancies. IfATE paid a further 30 packages worth £1,815,000 in its final full year under a voluntary exit scheme.