Despite some improvements in the management of court cases, around two-thirds of criminal trials do not proceed as planned on the day they are originally scheduled. Delays and aborted hearings create extra work, waste scarce resources and undermine confidence in the justice system.
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 Home Office spent at least £830 million between 2003 and 2015 on the e-borders programme and its successors, but has failed, so far, to deliver the full vision. We cannot, therefore view e-borders as having delivered value for money.
A National Audit Office report has found that the condition of 90 per cent of the Service Families Accommodation in Britain is at the two highest of four standards. However a specially-conducted survey has however revealed that, while 52 per cent of Service families feel their Ministry of Defence accommodation is in a good condition, […]
This report examines if government is achieving its ambition for the public sector to be a leader in decarbonising its activities.
This memorandum is intended to support a Public Accounts Committee hearing on the Major Projects Authority and its first annual report, published in May 2013.
Red Dragon – a project by the Ministry of Defence (MOD), Welsh Assembly Government and the then Welsh Development Agency (the Welsh Authorities) to provide modern aviation repair facilities at St Athan, South Wales – has cost the taxpayer around £113 million, although it was meant to have saved MOD money and protected jobs in […]
The Department for International Development’s spending on humanitarian interventions has almost trebled between 2010-11 and 2014-15 to more than £1 billion per year, rising as a share of its total budget from 6% to 14%.
Over the past ten years, the Ministry of Defence has introduced a number of reforms to the way it procures defence equipment, but its performance on Major Projects remains variable. As part of its annual report to Parliament, the National Audit Office examined twenty of the largest defence equipment projects. The report found that, during […]
This page is part of our decommissioning toolkit. In early 2003, the National Audit Office began a series of work on benchmarking the Ministry of Defence’s acquisition system. The aim of this work is to add value to the Ministry of Defence’s understanding of the key influences upon the acquisition system and how these can […]
The National Audit Office has identified errors in specialist pay, allowances and expenses paid to the Armed Forces via their Payroll and Human Resources system, as well as the inadequacy of evidence to support certain fixed assets and stock balances in the financial statements. For this reason, the Comptroller and Auditor General has qualified his […]
The purpose of this note is to update the Committee of Public Accounts on developments since the publication of the National Audit Office report in February, particularly the release of the Authority’s second annual report on 23 May.
June 2014.
The NAO has today reported on whether the Ministry of Defence has taken appropriate steps to make its fleet of eight Chinook Mk3 helicopters operational. The helicopters were delivered in 2001 but airworthiness concerns mean that they have been kept in storage and not flown operationally. According to today’s report to Parliament, the MoD’s progress […]
The programme to maintain the UK’s nuclear deterrent beyond the life of the current system, with the introduction into service of the first of a new class of submarines in 2024, is at an early stage, but the Ministry of Defence has made good progress establishing programme management arrangements and engaging stakeholders. The timetable is […]
This report reviews the robustness of assumptions underpinning the Ministry of Defence’s 2020–2030 Equipment Plan.
The head of the National Audit Office, the Comptroller and Auditor General, has today qualified the accounts of the Legal Services Commission for 2008-09 because of overpayments made by the Commission to solicitors, estimated at almost £25 million.
The provision of support for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is made more difficult because they operate in remote locations and harsh conditions. A report today from the National Audit Office finds that, despite the challenging operational environments, the MOD has successfully delivered around 300,000 personnel and 90,000 tonnes of freight to Iraq and Afghanistan […]
This page is part of our decommissioning toolkit. Our analysis showed that many of the Department’s projects are at the forefront of good contracting practice. We looked at 13 projects across the MoD, all of whom highlighted an area of good practice. Further detail is provided in the documents below. The PDFs on this page […]
HM Treasury and HMRC do not keep track of tax reliefs intended to change behaviour, or adequately report to Parliament on whether tax reliefs work as expected.