This report highlights the issues our case study areas told us were important to them in carrying out the Care Act. Local authorities may find their experience informative as they continue to develop their own approaches to carrying out the Care Act.
The CQC, the independent regulator of health and adult social care in England, has made substantial progress but needs to recruit and train staff and build a new organisational culture.
The NAO’s findings from its investigation into whether £1.3m of donations from a charity, the William Openshaw Street Foundation, were eligible to be matched with funds from the Cabinet Office’s Grassroots Grants Programme.
With the number of further education (FE) colleges in financial difficulty expected to rise rapidly, there are fundamental structural problems which might require decisions at a regional or sector-wide level.
The Ministry of Defence’s strategy for improving its financial management has put its finances on a sounder footing and is delivering results, but there are still considerable challenges ahead, including delivering the savings already removed from budget allocations.
The government has made a commitment to improve support for young people leaving foster or residential care in England but the system is not working effectively.
The C&AG, Amyas Morse, reports to the House of Commons on the systems in place to collect TV licence fee revenue.
Since 2005, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has incurred a total of £642 million in financial penalties relating to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in England.
Services and outcomes for people with neurological conditions need further improvement.
Wave 1 City Deals encouraged cities to develop capacity to manage devolved funding and increased responsibility. It is too early to tell what impact they will have on growth.
Mistakes in the original procurement and contract management of an IT system, designed to extract data from GP practices, contributed to losses of public funds, through asset write-offs and settlements with suppliers.
The NAO has called for government to negotiate greater access to information about how much outsourced public services are actually costing suppliers and therefore how much profit they are making.
The NAO has called for government to negotiate greater access to information about how much outsourced public services are actually costing suppliers and therefore how much profit they are making.
While the impact of the Pupil Premium will take time to become clear, it has the potential to bring about a significant improvement in outcomes. However, the Department for Education and schools have more to do.
The civil service must build on the progress it has made in managing equality, diversity and inclusion and place greater emphasis on departments’ valuing and maximizing the contribution of every member of their staff. This is more likely to deliver the business benefits than solely a focus on levels of representation of groups with ‘protected characteristics’.
A programme to sell enough government land by March 2015 to build a potential 100,000 homes did not collect information on the amount of money raised or how many homes have actually been built. In future land sales, responsibility for monitoring what happens to land after disposal should be made clear.
Over 10 million people who used public services (about 1 in 5) in the UK last year faced problems with the services. Detriment can and does occur. But users find the complaints and redress systems confusing.
The new military flying training is 6 years delayed and there is much to do if the MoD is to get the planned benefits from its contractor.
The first phase of the Care Act has been implemented well, but this places new responsibilities on local authorities whose core funding is being significantly reduced.
The Department for Communities and Local Government has taken steps since November 2014 to improve its understanding of new burdens on local authorities.