The Ministry of Defence’s strategy for improving its financial management has put its finances on a sounder footing and is delivering results, but there are still considerable challenges ahead, including delivering the savings already removed from budget allocations.
Since 2005, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has incurred a total of £642 million in financial penalties relating to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in England.
This report summarises our progress over the third year of the 2012-2015 strategy. As part of our commitment to the Public Sector Equality Duty we also publish equality data in our separate ‘Equality Information’ report.
A programme to sell enough government land by March 2015 to build a potential 100,000 homes did not collect information on the amount of money raised or how many homes have actually been built. In future land sales, responsibility for monitoring what happens to land after disposal should be made clear.
The Department for Education is not meeting its objectives to improve the quality of care and the stability of placements for children in care.
The DWP has reset Universal Credit on a sounder basis but at significant cost, by extending the time for implementation and choosing a more expensive approach.
The Better Care Fund is an innovative idea but the quality of early preparation and planning did not match the scale of the ambition. Current plans forecast £314m of savings for the NHS rather than the £1 billion in early planning assumptions.
We published two reports today – Following the discovery of widespread and deep-rooted weaknesses in the government’s management of contracts it is starting to improve how it manages its contracts.
Defra’s 2013-14 accounts have not been qualified but the C&AG warns of the likelihood of the European Commission’s imposing significant financial penalties on the department in future.
All three projects examined by the NAO have experienced significant delays stemming from a range of problems.
The DfT and Transport for London have done well to protect taxpayers’ interests in Crossrail but risks remain including delivery of the trains.
This briefing complements the Departmental Overview prepared for the Department for International Development and covers specific topics of particular interest to the International Development Committee, including trends in DFID’s expenditure and total UK Official Development Assistance; and the Department’s progress in managing the delivery of the government’s target to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on UK Official Development Assistance in 2013.
The DWP has not to date achieved value for money in the development of Universal Credit and to do so in future it will need to learn the lessons of past failures.
Universal Credit plans were driven by an ambitious timescale, and this led to the adoption of a new approach. The programme suffered from weak management and ineffective control.
The level of penalties imposed by the EC has gone down in 2012-13 to £20 million but this is largely caused by administrative delay in the Commission rather than improved compliance by Defra.
Stronger financial management will be needed in departments if they are to speed up the restructuring of service delivery.
The MOD acted promptly to revert to the decision to buy the vertical take-off version of the Joint Strike Fighter but will have to manage significant risks.
The NAO has highlighted five risks to the value for money of some national infrastructure projects.
The NAO has underlined the success of the 2012 Games and stressed the importance of building on that success to deliver legacy benefits.
An ambitious diversity programme that helps attract the best talent and encourages all staff to contribute fully is essential if we are to deliver our challenging corporate strategy.