Annual spending on consultants and temporary staff has reduced by £1.5 billion since 2010 when strict spending controls were introduced. However, annual spend is now increasing once more and is between £400 million and £600 million higher than in 2011-12.
This document summarises the findings of our work and identifies sources of help that may be useful to local areas and government departments supporting local public service reform.
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.
The Better Care Fund has not achieved the expected value for money, in terms of savings, outcomes for patients or hospital activity.
The BBC has improved the value for money of its activity, but there is scope to make improvements, particularly on licence fee evasion and the incomplete transition programme.
HM Revenue & Customs’ (HMRC’s) contract with Synnex-Concentrix UK Ltd was terminated in November 2016. The contract was designed to add capacity to HMRC’s programme of interventions to prevent or detect error and fraud in personal tax credits awards. HMRC estimated that the contract would save £1 billion over its three year life time and an estimated £193 million, excluding Concentrix’s costs, had been saved by the time of contract termination.
Having shown that the concept of a national citizen service has something to offer young people, to demonstrate value for money the OCS and the Trust now need to show they can grow NCS as intended and run it at a more affordable cost to the taxpayer.
Local authorities have kept up levels of capital spending but face pressure to meet debt costs and maintain investment in existing assets.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change’s Green Deal design not only failed to deliver any meaningful benefit, it increased suppliers’ costs – and therefore energy bills – in meeting their obligations through the ECO scheme.
The financial performance of acute hospital trusts has deteriorated sharply and their financial performance looks set to worsen in 2015-16.
Government’s programme to transfer back-office functions to two shared service centres has made savings but has not achieved value for money to date.
By reducing the number of its offices and moving to a regional centre model HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) hopes to significantly reduce its running costs and modernise the way it works. HMRC’s original plan has proved unrealistic and is now reconsidering the scope and timing of the programme. Any changes will need to be carefully managed to avoid diminishing the long term value of the strategy.
The case for a huge expansion of electronic monitoring using GPS was unproven, but the Ministry of Justice pursued an overly ambitious and high risk strategy anyway. Ultimately it has not delivered.
Staff numbers and costs have reduced significantly in the last five years. Not enough planning, however, has gone into making sure that the reductions are sustainable.
The Department has made good progress since we last reported on Carrier Strike, however it still has a lot to do to meet its targets at the end of 2020.
This overview of the NAO’s work on the government’s management of contracting examines subjects including the government’s commercial capability, accountability and transparency, and its management of contracted-out service delivery.
The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy has not achieved value for money for its £100 million spend on the second competition for government financial support for carbon capture storage.
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.
It is not possible to show that the Crown Commercial Service has achieved more than departments would otherwise have achieved by buying common goods and services themselves.
Digital transformation has a mixed track record across government. It has not yet provided a level of change that will allow government to further reduce costs while still meeting people’s needs.