Reports produced by the House of Commons’ Committee of Public Accounts (the PAC) following hearings based on our PFI and PPP investigations include nearly 1000 recommendations.
We have collected these recommendations and the related Treasury responses into a PFI and PPP/Privatisation Recommendations database last updated: 19/06/2009.
HM Courts Service has taken practical steps to improve the use of the Crown Court’s existing resources but a number of risks to value for money remain, the National Audit Office has today reported. The Crown Court operates from around 500 court rooms at almost 100 locations around England and Wales. In 2007 it heard […]
The Office of Fair Trading has improved its operations following recommendations on maintaining competition in markets made by the National Audit Office and Committee of Public Accounts in 2005 and 2006. According to an NAO progress report published today, the OFT now needs to concentrate its efforts on strengthening the skills and experience of its […]
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has successfully tackled recent outbreaks of Avian Influenza and Foot and Mouth Disease in livestock, concludes a National Audit Office report today. But in regions where diseases or parasites have become well established within the country, such as Bovine Tuberculosis affecting cattle or the Varroa mite affecting […]
To obtain value for money from public spending, lessons must be learnt from both success and failure. Although there is some effective learning within departments, learning is still not as prioritised as much as it should be, according to a National Audit Office report released today. Much learning in government occurs after large projects, initiatives […]
The majority of carers who receive benefits from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) are satisfied with the support they receive, worth up to £2 billion a year. The Department is delivering carers’ benefits effectively and has made improvements in processing claims in the last few years. But at least a fifth have difficulties […]
The National Audit Office has today reported that the processes used by central government to recruit civil servants do not fully deliver value for money. Departments are working to understand and improve parts of the external recruitment process but more can be done. In 2007-08, central government recruited more than 40,000 new staff, with 78 […]
The Building Schools for the Future programme aims to rebuild, refurbish and provide new Information Technology for all 3,500 secondary schools in England by 2020. The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) underestimated how long it would take to launch the programme and build the schools, though the speed of delivery has compared well […]
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 […]
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.
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]