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 Financial Conduct Authority cannot know whether its activities are reducing the overall scale of financial services mis-selling to consumers. The most prominent example of mis-selling is Payment Protection Insurance (PPI). Between April 2011 and November 2015, firms paid out £22.2 billion in compensation to more than 12 million customers who had bought PPI.
The incentives on government Accounting Officers to prioritise value for money are weak compared to those associated with the day-to-day job of satisfying Ministers.
The exact scale of fraud within government is unknown. The quality and completeness of fraud data is often variable.
This briefing on financial management of the EU budget has been prepared for the UK Committee of Public Accounts, drawing exclusively from published material.
The NAO has published the findings from its investigation into members’ experience of civil service pension administration.
The government needs to do more to demonstrate how new arrangements for training new teachers are improving the quality of teaching in classrooms.
The NAO has published the findings from its investigation into the acceptance of gifts and hospitality by government officials.
The newly-created Competition and Markets Authority has made significant progress in improving how the UK’s competition regime works, and it is now more coherent than before. Business awareness of competition law, however, is low and while it has improved the robustness of its enforcement casework, the regime has so far not produced a substantial flow of enforcement decisions or fines.
There are shortcomings in how the supply of NHS clinical staff in England is managed, in terms of both planning the future workforce and meeting the current demand for staff.
There was an estimated net loss of £1.1m when Just Solutions International, the commercial arm of the National Offender Management Service, set up to sell consultancy advice abroad, was closed in September 2015.
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.
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%.
Annual spending on consultants and temporary staff has reduced by £1.5 billion since 2010 when strict spending controls were introduced. However, annual spend is now increasing once more and is between £400 million and £600 million higher than in 2011-12.
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 for Work and Pensions has not yet achieved value for money in managing contracted-out health and disability assessments.
A third of major government projects due to deliver in the next five years are rated as in doubt or unachievable unless action is taken to improve delivery. Greater transparency on project performance is required.
In response to questions raised by the House of Commons Health Committee in late 2013 and wider Parliamentary interest, we conducted an investigation into five specific concerns about NHS Property Services. Our investigation established the facts relating to these concerns.
May 2014