There was an estimated net loss of £1.1m when Just Solutions International, the commercial arm of the National Offender Management Service, set up to sell consultancy advice abroad, was closed in September 2015.
In December 2015 a five year contract, worth around £800 million between UnitingCare Partnership and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough clinical commissioning group collapsed after only 8 months because it ran into financial difficulties. NAO examined the design, procurement and operation of the contract and the events that led to its termination.
The MoD’s new regulations for overseeing non-competitive procurement has the potential to save significant sums of money, if implemented properly.
The St Helena airport’s planned opening date in May 2016 has been postponed as outstanding safety concerns are addressed, potentially adding to the project’s cost and delaying its benefits.
It is important that the Government ensures its compliance programme reflects the changing risks within the labour market, and maintains its progress in ensuring all employers pay the minimum wage.
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 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 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.
Our financial audit reports contain audit opinions on accounts across the public sector.
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.
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 […]
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
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 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.
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.
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 […]