The case for LEAP

LEAP is not a training provider, a course catalogue, or an e-learning platform. It is a capability system, designed for the work senior public servants and operational teams actually do.

01. Four convictions

What we believe about capability.

Capability grows in context

Not in classrooms, not on a learning platform. Inside the actual decisions, briefs and services your teams are working on this quarter.

The discovery is the learning

Instruction is delivery. Discovery is capability. LEAP labs are designed so the participant arrives at the insight. That is what makes it stick.

Every lab produces artefacts

Decision records, service blueprints, commissioning briefs. Things used in real work the following week, not certificates.

Observable behaviour change

We measure what people do differently after the lab, not what they remember. This is the only definition of capability that withstands a Spending Review question.

02. The evidence base

The problem LEAP addresses is documented by government, quantified by economists, and confirmed by the organisations deploying the tools. Three independent evidence streams sit behind the labs.

Stream 01. Sector validation

NHS Digital Academy

The NHS Digital Academy commissioned a Learning Needs Analysis. 200 pages, 1.4 million staff in scope. It independently arrived at the same nine capability hypotheses LEAP's lab library was built to address.

200

page commission-backed evidence review

1.4M

NHS staff in scope of the analysis

9

capability hypotheses LEAP labs address

"The worst thing we could do is introduce more mandatory training, which is so generic as to be pointless."
NHS Digital Academy LNA, 2024

Stream 02. The scale of the problem

FutureDotNow

FutureDotNow has produced the most current and credible quantification of the UK's essential digital skills crisis. The problem LEAP addresses is the largest single workforce productivity gap the UK faces.

52%

of the UK workforce lack at least one of the 20 government-defined essential digital skills for work

25+ yrs

to close the gap at the current pace

£23bn

annual cost of inaction to the UK economy

Sources: The Economic Impact of Closing the Work Essential Digital Skills Gap (DSIT-commissioned, May 2025) and The Ripple Effect (December 2025), FutureDotNow.

Stream 03. The AI capability imperative

Anthropic Economic Index

The tools are already deployed. The capability to use them judgementally has not been built. That is where LEAP operates, and it is exactly the gap Anthropic's own research now quantifies.

94.3%

of tasks in business and finance roles theoretically exposed to AI augmentation

91.3%

of tasks in management roles theoretically exposed

20→50%

self-reported productivity gains year on year when capability is built, not just tools deployed

Actual adoption remains far below theoretical possibility. The gap between what AI can do and what public sector workers currently do with it is exactly the capability gap LEAP's "AI With Judgement" lab is designed to close.

Public sector teams are already working inside AI-augmented environments (M365 Copilot, Google Workspace, frontier models in the browser) whether the capability framework around them has been built or not. The pace of deployment is outstripping the pace of capability development. That is what makes the LEAP offer urgent, not merely useful.

Sources: Anthropic Economic Index, "Learning Curves" (March 2026), How AI Is Transforming Work at Anthropic (2025), and Digital Inclusion Action Plan: One Year On (GOV.UK).

03. The LEAP whitepaper

Capability, not training.

The full argument behind LEAP's lab method. Why mandatory training has failed to move the needle on public sector capability, and what an artefacts-first alternative looks like in procurement, in delivery, and in measurable behaviour change. Written for permanent secretaries, finance leads, and digital directors building an internal case.

In LEAP's own delivery

  • Observed behaviour change data from labs run with public sector cohorts.
  • Cross departmental capability reviews under the Spending Review settlement.
  • Named client references introduced during procurement conversations (commercial confidentiality applies).