(Bloomberg) -- When Rishi Sunak announced his review of government spending would be cut back to just a one-year funding plan, he caught top civil servants across multiple ministries by surprise.
Officials had been expecting the “spending review” to determine budgets for government departments for a three-year period and were submitting bids for cash to the Treasury.
But on Wednesday morning, the chancellor of the exchequer's announcement of a one-year review left senior staff in the dark about what was happening and unable to explain it to their teams.
Top officials had to tell their departments they were “taking stock” of the Treasury announcement and trying to find out what it actually meant, according to an email circulated within one department and seen by Bloomberg. The message pointed to a tweet from the Treasury.
One official said similar messages had been sent around other departments, and complained the lack of warning from the Treasury was just the latest example of the chaos within Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government. A spokesman for the Treasury declined to comment.
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