Showing 1141 - 1160 of 2293 results

  2. Building the capacity of the Third Sector

    Report Value for money

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    A National Audit Office report has concluded that two programmes aimed at building capacity in the third sector have had a positive impact on frontline third sector organisations but have not yet demonstrated value for money. Both have suffered from administrative weaknesses and a lack of initial targets against which the effectiveness of the programmes […]

  3. The efficiency of radio production at the BBC: review by the Comptroller & Auditor General presented to the BBC Trust’s Finance and Strategy Committee

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    The NAO review looked at what the BBC is doing to maximise the efficiency of radio production across its Network and Nations radio stations, focusing on the use of cost comparisons for similar programme types within the BBC stations and with commercial competitors, the BBC’s efficiency plans and the BBC’s assessment of the impact of efficiency initiatives on performance.

  4. Assessment of the Capability Review programme

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    The Cabinet Office’s Capability Review programme aims to assess and improve government departments’ ability to deliver their objectives. The National Audit Office today reports that the programme has led to evidence of greater capability in departments.  But departments have yet to show that the programme has had an impact on outcomes in delivering public services. […]

  5. The Warm Front Scheme

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    The Department of Energy and Climate Change’s Warm Front Scheme to tackle fuel poverty in England helped to improve the energy efficiency of over 635,000 households between June 2005 and March 2008. According to a report by the National Audit Office there were, however, 1.9 million vulnerable households in 2006, so this rate of progress […]

  6. Delivering High Quality Impact Assessments

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    Government is committed to conducting formal impact assessments of the need for and likely impact of new regulations. A National Audit Office report has found that scrutiny of proposed legislation is strengthening and that the standard is better than it was, but one fifth of assessments still did not include any quantified data to assess […]

  8. NHS Pay Modernisation in England: Agenda for Change

    Report Value for money

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     According to a National Audit Office report, the NHS has successfully transferred 1.1 million NHS employees on to a new simplified pay system. Given the scale of the NHS this was a substantial task which the NHS, in partnership with the trade unions, achieved in a short timescale. There are some examples of NHS trusts […]

  9. Management of Asylum Applications by the UK Border Agency

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    The New Asylum Model, introduced by the Home Office in 2006 to achieve faster conclusions to asylum applications, has strengthened aspects of the asylum process, according to a report today by the National Audit Office. The case ownership approach, in which a single individual manages an application from start to finish, has created a strong […]

  10. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: Managing the waste PFI programme

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    The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has recently made considerable progress in increasing the number and size of local authority projects to procure new waste treatment facilities under the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). But, according to a National Audit Office report today, the Department was initially too slow to respond to the 1999 […]

  11. Central government’s management of service contracts

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    Central government could make large savings by better managing its contracts for services such as IT, security, catering and cleaning, according to a report today by the National Audit Office. Better contract management could potentially generate estimated savings of between £160 million and £290 million a year, across total annual expenditure on service contracts of […]

  12. Ministry of Defence: Major Projects Report 2008

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    Over the past ten years, the Ministry of Defence has introduced a number of reforms to the way it procures defence equipment, but its performance on Major Projects remains variable. As part of its annual report to Parliament, the National Audit Office examined twenty of the largest defence equipment projects. The report found that, during […]

  13. Planning for homes: Speeding up planning applications for major housing developments in England

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    The Department for Communities and Local Government has given local authorities approximately £68 million a year to improve the handling of planning applications and in particular to speed them up. While authorities are taking more decisions on major housing schemes within 13 weeks, the true extent of the improvement across the development process is not […]

  14. Maintaining the Occupied Royal Palaces

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    The National Audit Office reported today that the Royal Household has improved value for money by tightening up the way it plans and manages its maintenance of the Occupied Royal Palaces. Without an agreed way of measuring the condition of the estate, however, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport cannot show how far the […]

  16. End of life care

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    Each year around half a million people die in England, three quarters of whom do so following a period of chronic illness, such as cancer or heart disease. A report out today by the National Audit Office found that some people approaching the end of their life receive a high quality service, but that there […]

  19. Natural England’s Role in Improving Sites of Special Scientific Interest

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    Increased spending has been accompanied by an improvement in the condition of England’s Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), according to a report released today by the National Audit Office.  The assessment of the condition of SSSIs, however, has fallen behind and there is a risk that Natural England is not detecting all sites that […]

  20. HM Revenue & Customs: Management of Tax Debt

    Report Value for money

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    HMRC has improved how it manages debts owed to it by taxpayers, according to a report by the National Audit Office. The amount of money owed has reduced from 4.3 per cent of tax collected in 2005-06 to 3.8 per cent in 2007-08. The age of the direct tax debt has also reduced. Over the […]