In this guide we highlight National Audit Office reports which illustrate the different approaches departments take to initiating projects. We show how they develop a realistic understanding of the risks, benefits and deliverability of projects.
The Department for Work and Pensions has made good progress in tackling benefit fraud, which is estimated to have fallen from an estimated £2 billion in 2000-01 to £800 million in 2006-07, a substantial achievement by its staff, although definitional changes have helped. Tackling benefit fraud is inherently difficult as it is in the nature […]
Ahead of the government’s Immigration White Paper, the NAO has examined the Home Office’s management of the Skilled Worker visa route.
The Government has not in general measured the benefits delivered by its two central internet services Directgov and Business.gov, and the infrastructure service Government Gateway, which together cost some £90 million a year.
The environment for government borrowing has become more challenging in recent years, a new National Audit Office (NAO) report finds. The independent public spending watchdog’s report Managing government borrowing examines how public bodies are pursuing the government’s debt management objectives, and how they manage the risks of borrowing1. The report found that government’s borrowing needs […]
This study examines whether the government and Network Rail are in a position to deliver the Transpennine Route Upgrade successfully.
This toolkit is designed to guide those overseeing public service markets or assessing the effectiveness of these markets in terms of value for money and user outcomes. It helps government address a set of new challenges around its use of markets to deliver public services, including oversight, consumer protection, regulation and helping to achieve effective competition and innovative delivery.
Homelessness has increased across all measures since 2010, with many local authorities now seeing it as a risk to their financial sustainability.
The Department for Education should set out the planned overall impact of the programme on productivity and growth.
The head of the NAO’s annual speech will focus on the challenges of rising demand for public services and stretched resources.
The programme to increase online filing of tax returns has made significant progress, but HMRC needs a better understanding of the benefits and costs to customers and how its online filing costs compare to those for paper returns.
HMRC’s flagship tax transformation programme is now expected to cost five times the original forecast in 2016 (in real terms) following repeated delays.
The Ministry of Defence (the Department) has committed itself to annual rental bills of nearly £200 million and lost out on billions of pounds of asset value as a result of selling and leasing back the majority of its married quarters estate to Annington Property Limited in 1996 because of the subsequent steep increase in house prices and rents.
This report examines the evidence base supporting the decision to proceed with the Thames Tideway Tunnel, a tunnel running 25 kilometres from Acton to Abbey Mills, as well as progress achieved to date.
Overall spending on discretionary local welfare support by central and local government has reduced since April 2013. The consequences of this gap in provision are not understood.
A series of lessons and recommendations for tackling fraud and protecting propriety when spending public money during a national emergency.
The exact scale of fraud within government is unknown. The quality and completeness of fraud data is often variable.
The Comptroller and Auditor General, Amyas Morse, has today qualified his opinion on the 2014-15 Accounts of the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) on the grounds of regularity.
The cost of modernising the Great Western railway is estimated to be £5.58 billion, an increase of £2.1 billion since 2013, and there are delays to the electrification of the route of at least 18 to 36 months. The Department for Transport and Network Rail have begun to improve the management of the programme but they have more to do to protect value for money in the future.
The Cabinet Office has not yet established a clear role for itself in coordinating and leading departments’ efforts to protect their information, according to the National Audit Office. Today’s report found that its ambition to undertake such a role is weakened by the limited information which departments collect on their security costs, performance and risks. […]