The Home Office has improved its approach to managing the portfolio of major projects for which it is responsible, according to a report today by the National Audit Office. The Home Office is currently managing over 30 major projects, more than any other central civil government department, with a combined estimated lifetime cost of £15 […]
The Comptroller and Auditor General, Amyas Morse, has today qualified his opinion on the 2014-15 Accounts of the Office for Legal Complaints (OLC) on the grounds of regularity.
Venues and infrastructure for the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games are on track to be delivered on time for the Games and the cost is currently forecast to be within the £9,325 million budget for the Games announced in March 2007, according to a progress report to Parliament by the National Audit Office. However, […]
The Department for Education should set out the planned overall impact of the programme on productivity and growth.
An initiative, begun in 2004, by the National Offender Management Service to build a single offender management IT system for the prison and probation services has not delivered value for money. A National Audit Office investigation found the project had been hampered by poor management leading to a three-year delay, a doubling in project costs […]
Schools, especially secondary schools, face real challenges in retaining and developing their teachers. National data suggest progress but mask significant local variation.
The National Audit Office has concluded that the public support provided to UK banks by the Treasury was justified, given the scale of the economic and social costs if one or more major banks had collapsed. In providing that support, moreover, the Treasury met two of the government’s principal objectives: protecting depositors’ money in banks and […]
Overall spending on discretionary local welfare support by central and local government has reduced since April 2013. The consequences of this gap in provision are not understood.
The Department of Health has developed an ambitious and comprehensive strategy for dementia. However, there has not yet been a robust approach to implementation, according to a National Audit Office report published today. Despite the Department stating, since 2007, that dementia is now a national priority, it has not been given the levers or urgency […]
The current defence programme is unaffordable, according to a report from the National Audit Office. The Ministry of Defence has already reduced the deficit between the defence budget and planned expenditure by £15 billion, but a shortfall of between £6 billion and £36 billion remains. The financial crisis means a substantial increase in funding is […]
The Government has committed £933 million from the Libor Fund, but cannot yet confirm that all the money has been used as intended.
The need for housing in England has in recent years grown faster than its supply, and housebuilding needs to increase across the country.
The service provided to students applying for finance in 2009 did not achieve value for money, according to a report today by the National Audit Office. There were major problems in the processing of applications – with fewer than half new applications being fully processed by the start of term – and in communications with […]
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 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.
Demand for ambulance services continues to grow rapidly, but services are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with rising demand.
The Ministry of Defence (the Department) has committed itself to annual rental bills of nearly £200 million and lost out on billions of pounds of asset value as a result of selling and leasing back the majority of its married quarters estate to Annington Property Limited in 1996 because of the subsequent steep increase in house prices and rents.
The MoD’s new regulations for overseeing non-competitive procurement has the potential to save significant sums of money, if implemented properly.
The Cabinet Office has not yet established a clear role for itself in coordinating and leading departments’ efforts to protect their information, according to the National Audit Office. Today’s report found that its ambition to undertake such a role is weakened by the limited information which departments collect on their security costs, performance and risks. […]
In its progress report on the Olympic and Paralympic Games the National Audit Office has found that with four years to go until the start of the Games, the preparations have progressed in important ways. In particular, there has been good progress in preparing the Olympic Park site and construction activities are broadly on track. […]