Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office, today reported the results of his examination of the Benefits Agency’s Appropriation Account. Sir John qualified his audit opinion on the account due to the level of benefit fraud and the level of error in benefit awards, principally in income support and jobseeker’s allowance. This account […]
The NAO believes a review of the New Homes Bonus scheme is essential to ensure the Department understands the substantial financial risks to local authorities.
This investigation examines the recent increase in identified errors in Carer’s Allowance and attempts to recover overpayments.
This report examines how government has set itself up to deliver its long-term environmental goals.
Amyas Morse, the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) of the National Audit Office, has reported on the 2017-18 accounts of HM Revenue & Customs. His report focuses on tax revenue; Personal Tax Credits and Child Benefit error and fraud; and HMRC’s digital transformation programme.
This report sets out the facts about the government’s support of shale gas development in England.
This investigation covers a single, major cause of underpayment error in ESA. This error relates to people whose existing benefit claim was converted to ESA and who were entitled to income-related ESA but were only awarded contribution-based ESA.
This report examines projects leaving the Government Major Projects Portfolio, which comprises the biggest and riskiest projects across government
The government now accepts the urgent need for a skilled cross-departmental leadership group – but this requires changing the long-standing culture of the Senior Civil Service.
Departments have acted quickly to reduce staff numbers and this should bring significant savings. To sustain these savings, and deliver long-term value for money improvements, staff numbers must stay at these reduced levels and departments must develop new ways of working.
The Department for Transport started its preparations for the 2010 spending review early and took steps to improve and challenge the evidence on which it based its decisions with a view to securing value for money.
HMRC’s renewed strategy for dealing with alcohol duty fraud is a significant improvement on the previous strategy. However, the Department needs a reliable estimate of the tax gaps for beer and wine; and to tackle successfully the illicit diversion of duty-unpaid alcohol back into the UK market.
By creating complex shared services over-tailored to individual departments, government has increased costs rather than made savings.
The St Helena airport’s planned opening date in May 2016 has been postponed as outstanding safety concerns are addressed, potentially adding to the project’s cost and delaying its benefits.
This report examines Defra’s approach to developing the Future Farming and Countryside Programme.
This report examines Department for International Trade (DIT) and UK Export Finance (UKEF) progress and performance in supporting UK exports.
In this report, we assess the value for money of the Department for Work and Pensions’ introduction of Universal Credit.
DFID is successfully reaching particularly poor people with transfers, but needs to focus more on how cost-effectively they are delivered.
There are major risks the Department of Energy and Climate Change must address to achieve value for money from its £11.3 billion national programme to install ‘smart’ electricity and gas meters in all homes and smaller non-domestic premises in Great Britain from 2014 to 2019.
The Department for Education has made progress against many of its objectives in delivering the free entitlement to early education, but it must address variations in take-up, quality of provision and the impact on attainment in later years if it is to achieve value for money.