This toolkit is designed to guide those overseeing public service markets or assessing the effectiveness of these markets in terms of value for money and user outcomes. It helps government address a set of new challenges around its use of markets to deliver public services, including oversight, consumer protection, regulation and helping to achieve effective competition and innovative delivery.
Homelessness has increased across all measures since 2010, with many local authorities now seeing it as a risk to their financial sustainability.
The Department for Education should set out the planned overall impact of the programme on productivity and growth.
The programme to increase online filing of tax returns has made significant progress, but HMRC needs a better understanding of the benefits and costs to customers and how its online filing costs compare to those for paper returns.
The head of the NAO’s annual speech will focus on the challenges of rising demand for public services and stretched resources.
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.
HMRC’s flagship tax transformation programme is now expected to cost five times the original forecast in 2016 (in real terms) following repeated delays.
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.
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.
A series of lessons and recommendations for tackling fraud and protecting propriety when spending public money during a national emergency.
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. […]
The exact scale of fraud within government is unknown. The quality and completeness of fraud data is often variable.
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 cost of modernising the Great Western railway is estimated to be £5.58 billion, an increase of £2.1 billion since 2013, and there are delays to the electrification of the route of at least 18 to 36 months. The Department for Transport and Network Rail have begun to improve the management of the programme but they have more to do to protect value for money in the future.
The Government has committed £933 million from the Libor Fund, but cannot yet confirm that all the money has been used as intended.
Used appropriately, GPC can be a cost-effective way for government to procure goods and services. However, there is no up to date value-for-money case quantifying the benefits of the cards. There has also been a lack of clear central guidance on when the cards are the most appropriate way to procure goods and services.
Demand for ambulance services continues to grow rapidly, but services are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with rising demand.
The need for housing in England has in recent years grown faster than its supply, and housebuilding needs to increase across the country.
The Department for Work and Pensions has introduced the Work Programme quickly, in just over a year, and this has had benefits, but the speed with which it was launched has also increased risks. The Department and providers have made assumptions about how many people the Programme will get back into work but there is a significant risk that they are over-optimistic.
Schools, especially secondary schools, face real challenges in retaining and developing their teachers. National data suggest progress but mask significant local variation.