Financial audits: an overview
Our financial audit reports contain audit opinions on accounts across the public sector.
Our financial audit reports contain audit opinions on accounts across the public sector.
The Department for Work and Pensions has made good progress in tackling benefit fraud, which is estimated to have fallen from an estimated £2 billion in 2000-01 to £800 million in 2006-07, a substantial achievement by its staff, although definitional changes have helped. Tackling benefit fraud is inherently difficult as it is in the nature […]
The Assets Recovery Agency was set up without a feasibility study and has failed to achieve its targets for the recovery of criminal assets and for becoming self financing by 2005-06. To date the Agency has spent £65 million and recovered assets worth £23 million. Although the Agency now expects to become self-financing by 2009-10, […]
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.
The NAO strategy 2015-16 to 2017-18 sets out how our public audit perspective will help Parliament hold government to account and improve public services.
The purpose of the guide is to demonstrate and explain some of the good practices used by organisations in tackling external fraud. It includes checklists to help you assess your current practices.
Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs continues to make progress in ensuring that income tax levied under the Scottish rate will be assessed and collected properly, but still faces significant challenges to ensure that all Scottish taxpayers are correctly identified
An initiative, begun in 2004, by the National Offender Management Service to build a single offender management IT system for the prison and probation services has not delivered value for money. A National Audit Office investigation found the project had been hampered by poor management leading to a three-year delay, a doubling in project costs […]
The Department of Health now needs to gain a better understanding of the different ways to commission personalised services for users, and how these lead to improvements in user outcomes.
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
The NAO strategy 2014-15 to 2016-17 sets out how our public audit perspective will help Parliament hold government to account and improve public services.
There has been a greater focus on enforcing criminal confiscation orders, but there remain fundamental weaknesses in the system.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change’s Green Deal design not only failed to deliver any meaningful benefit, it increased suppliers’ costs – and therefore energy bills – in meeting their obligations through the ECO scheme.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change’s Green Deal design not only failed to deliver any meaningful benefit, it increased suppliers’ costs – and therefore energy bills – in meeting their obligations through the ECO scheme.
HM Revenue & Customs achieved a return of around £4.50 for every £1 spent on tackling the hidden economy in 2006-07 and recent campaigns to encourage people into the formal economy have achieved much higher returns. But, according to the National Audit Office, the penalties the Department imposes when it detects people in the hidden […]
The NAO Strategy 2013-14 to 2015-16 sets out how our public audit perspective will help Parliament hold government to account and improve public services.
Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office, reported to Parliament today that he has qualified his audit opinion on the accounts of the Community Fund for 2004-05. The Community Fund (now operating as the Big Lottery Fund together with the New Opportunities Fund) have reported that, in September 2004 they identified a number […]
The UK has levels of social security fraud and error which are similar to those in comparable countries, but the Department for Work and Pensions has a better understanding than other nations of the problems and is doing more to tackle them. A report by the National Audit Office, based on research carried out by […]
The Department for Work and Pensions have made good progress in tackling benefit fraud and estimating the level of fraud and error in key benefits, according to the National Audit Office. By March 2002 the Department had cut the estimated level of fraud and error in Income Support and Jobseeker’s Allowance by 24 per cent […]
HMRC aimed to move more customers online thereby reducing staff costs but significant numbers of staff were let go before technical improvements were completed leading to a collapse in service quality in 2015. Services have since improved.