The Department for Children, Schools and Families is achieving its aim of promoting partnering in secondary education in England, according to a report today by the National Audit Office. Some 87 per cent of schools work with other schools and organisations on improving attainment and behaviour – and headteachers are clear that partnering is delivering […]
This report examines whether the BBC has managed E20 in a way that is likely to achieve value for money.
Departments have continued to reduce their estates and government is now getting better value for money. The Government Property Unit, however, has not yet made much progress towards its more challenging objective of creating an integrated estate.
The report examines whether to inform decisions across the BBC, the Corporation efficiently, effectively and economically understands how people use and respond to the full range of its services.
PaceSetter has led to productivity improvements and may have contributed to greater staff engagement. However, the extent to which overall efficiency has improved is not clear; and some key principles of process improvement are not yet being applied strategically across the entire organisation.
The Department for Work and Pensions will have to make rapid progress in reorganising the way it operates if it is to meet its target of cutting costs by £20 billion in four years while achieving substantial reform of the welfare system.
This investigation covers how the UK government determines the amount of funding it allocates to the devolved administrations.
This report assesses whether the apprenticeships programme is providing value for money.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has improved the maturity of its financial management in a number of areas, but the NAO has not been able to conclude that the Department is achieving value for money.
A National Audit Office report on UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) has found that, three years into its five-year strategy to deliver improved support to UK exporters, it is close to meeting most of its performance targets. UKTI lacks, however, sufficiently robust measures of the costs of delivering its individual services. Without such information it […]
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 […]
This report reviews government’s progress in improving the planning and spending framework since we last reported in July 2016.
Regulators and government need to work together better to ensure that vulnerable consumers get the support they need.
A report by the NAO into government action to tackle problem drug use has concluded that there has been good progress in a number of areas, including an increasing number of problem drug users in effective treatment and an increasing number leaving treatment free from dependency. Without an evaluative framework for the Strategy as a […]
This report focuses on the arrangements for converting schools to academies. We assess the Department for Education’s approach and the extent of conversion; the robustness, cost and speed of the conversion process; and the availability of sponsors and multi-academy trusts to support schools to convert to academies.
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 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 […]
Devolution deals to devolve power from central government to local areas in England offer opportunities to stimulate economic growth and reform public services for local users, but the arrangements are untested and government could do more to provide confidence that these deals will achieve the benefits intended
The National Audit Office and the Audit Commission have today called for public bodies to work together much more effectively than they currently do to maximise savings from procurement activities.
The preparations for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games are going well overall and, despite time pressures, the Olympic Delivery Authority remains on course to deliver its construction programme.