Cyber Essentials Renewal Under Danzell: What Carries Over from Willow

If you certified under the Willow question set and your renewal lands under Danzell, the most useful thing to know is not "what changed in the scheme" — it is "which of my answers still stand". We compared the two official IASME question sets document-by-document. The short version: nothing you answered has been deleted, most of it carries over, but a handful of questions changed in ways that make blind copying genuinely dangerous.

The headline numbers

Comparing the official Willow question set (document v15.2) against the official Danzell set (document v16, in force from April 2026):

• Willow asked 93 questions; Danzell asks 106.
• No Willow question was removed outright — every answer you wrote still has a home.
• 62 questions carry unchanged in substance - 61 word-for-word identical, one with a trivial wording edit. Your old answers carry, subject to still being true.
• 18 questions moved to a new number with the same or near-identical wording.
• 9 questions were reworded enough that the old answer needs a fresh read against the new text.
• 4 questions changed in substance, not just wording — these are the dangerous ones.
• 13 questions are new, with nothing to carry.

Always work from the current official wording: the self-assessment question preview is free, and IASME's April 2026 update note explains the scheme-level changes.

The renumbering trap in the scope section

The single easiest renewal mistake under Danzell is copying answers by question number. In the scope section the device-inventory block moved wholesale:

• Willow A2.4 (your laptops and desktops) is now Danzell A2.6.
• Willow A2.5 (your servers) is now Danzell A2.7.
• Willow A2.6 (tablets and mobiles) is now Danzell A2.8.
• Willow A2.7 (your list of networks) is now Danzell A2.4.

Read that last pair again: the question numbered A2.4 now asks for your network list, and last year it asked for your device list. Anyone pasting answers by number files their laptop inventory under the networks question and vice versa. The same cascade happens in section A1, where five new questions pushed most of the section down by one to four places.

The four substance changes

The insurance question flipped direction (A3.2). Willow asked whether you wanted to opt out of the included cyber insurance; Danzell asks whether you want to opt in. Carrying last year's yes/no verbatim states the opposite of what you meant. Answer it fresh.

"Applications" became "software" in the 14-day update questions (A6.5). The high-risk update rule now explicitly covers software, not only applications. Before carrying your old answer, check that your update process genuinely covers everything the broader word reaches.

The cloud-scope rule changed inside the device question (Danzell A2.6). Only in-scope devices connecting to cloud services are included — but user accounts accessing cloud services must meet the controls, including MFA, regardless of the device's scope status. Your device list may carry; the scoping decisions behind it need re-checking.

Network equipment now needs quantities (Danzell A2.5). Willow asked for make and model of your firewalls and routers; Danzell also wants the quantity of each. A carried list needs a count column.

The thirteen new questions

The additions cluster in two places. Section A1 gains organisational-detail questions — operational addresses, additional legal entities, whether an NCSC Cyber Advisor supported you, how you heard about the scheme, and NCSC Early Warning sign-up. Section A2 gains scope-precision questions: descriptions of excluded networks and how sub-sets were built, per-site internet connections, how home workers connect, and the equipment used to create a partial-scope boundary. None of these existed last year, so there is nothing to carry — but almost all of them are answerable in minutes from records you already hold.

How to run the renewal without the traps

1. Start from last year's answers as material, never as a template keyed by question number.
2. Map each old answer to its new home before deciding whether it still stands.
3. Treat the four substance changes as new questions wearing old numbers.
4. Answer the thirteen genuinely new questions from your existing records.
5. Check every carried answer is still true — the mapping tells you where an answer goes, not whether your organisation still matches it.

This is exactly the drudgery that keeping last year's working record eliminates: when the answers, the evidence context, and the reasoning are stored against their question references, renewal becomes a review of what changed in your organisation rather than an archaeology project on what you meant twelve months ago.