The BBC has made good progress in rationalising and upgrading its estate. But value for money in the short to medium term will depend crucially on the BBC’s making better use of its estate.
The BBC Executive did not have a sufficient grip on its Digital Media Initiative programme. Nor did it commission a thorough independent assessment to see whether it was technically sound.
The Charity Commission is not regulating charities effectively. It fails to take tough action in some serious cases and makes poor use of its powers.
The NAO found that the Charity Commission did not properly consider whether The Cup Trust met the key legal requirement of being within the jurisdiction of the High Court of England and Wales before registering it as a charity in 2009, and was slow in handling the case.
HMRC and the Treasury do not know if incentives designed to increase charitable giving, at a cost to the taxpayer of £940 million in 2012-13, have resulted in more income for charities.
The NAO reports on the use of confidentiality clauses and severance payments in three more areas of government.
Savings the BBC has made from senior manager redundancies exceed the cost of severance payments but it has too often breached its policies on severance payments for senior managers.
