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 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 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.
Government-led initiatives to help unemployed people find work are having a real impact. Programmes such as the New Deal have helped reduce the number of people on benefit, and the average length of claims. However, too many people still do not stay in work once they have found it and more now needs to be […]
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 […]
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 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. […]
The MoD’s new regulations for overseeing non-competitive procurement has the potential to save significant sums of money, if implemented properly.
Central government could improve its day to day cash management and reduce the amount of interest it pays on debt if its departments and their sponsored bodies held less money in commercial bank accounts. Today’s report to Parliament by the National Audit Office recommends that these organisations instead use the Exchequer as their main banking […]
Plans to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of services such as human resources, payroll and finance could cost the Department for Transport £81 million (by March 2015) rather than saving £57 million as originally expected. There will need to be substantial improvements in the shared service centre’s productivity if the Department’s original targets are to […]
Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office, has today qualified his opinion on the Department for Work and Pensions accounts for the eighteenth consecutive year. This is because an estimated £2.5 billion has been lost to fraud and error in benefit payments, and because of uncertainties over the debts created by customers being […]
The exact scale of fraud within government is unknown. The quality and completeness of fraud data is often variable.
A National Audit Office report has found that government has strengthened its drive to purchase more environmentally sustainable goods and services. In 2005 the government set a target to be recognised by 2009 as one of the leaders in the EU in sustainable procurement. However a number of departments are not yet on course to […]
Delivering the National Programme for IT in the NHS is proving to be an enormous challenge. All elements of the Programme are advancing and some are complete, but the original timescales for the electronic Care Records Service, one of the central elements of the Programme, turned out to be unachievable, raised unrealistic expectations and put […]
The NAO has published its investigation into misuse of the Flexible Support Fund in Plaistow jobcentre. The report looks at how the Department for Work & Pensions responded to allegations of misuse at the jobcentre.
The National Audit Office has reported today that Government departments and local health and social care organisations do not have enough information on numbers of adults with autism. They also lack a full understanding and awareness of the condition, limiting their ability to plan and deliver services effectively. Autism, which includes Asperger syndrome, is a […]