Why Wait? Parliamentary Accountability Horizon Scanner

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 47 historical audits (Rank: 8) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Department arrangements: management of the development and implementation of the plan, sufficiency of delivery budget for the plan. This is an axtension of previous reports on Equipment Plan
• Scope limitations: Individual projects and programmes within the plan
• House of Commons Library briefing: Defence Investment Plan: Key decisions
• Public Accounts Committee status: Inquiry opened 12 December 2025; Oral evidence session held 16 July 2026 (prior to NAO report publication)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public expenditure
• Estimated value: 4 year Defence Investment Plan: £298bn defence investment (2026/27-2029/30)
• Source: Defence Investment Plan, published 30 June 2026

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• The Equipment Plan 2023 to 2033 (HC 315, published 2023-12-04)
• The Equipment Plan 2022 to 2032 (HC 907, published 2022-11-29)
• The UK's F-35 capability (HC 989, published 2025-07-11)
• Defence inventory management (HC 1793, published 2023-09-13)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding The Equipment Plan 2022 to 2032: We have assessed the Department's progress in implementing the recommendations from our previous reports (Appendix Two). This shows that the Department is taking action to make further improvements to its approach and the reliability of its assessment. This year we recommend that the Department assesses whether its planning processes are responsive and flexible enough for the rapidly changing context in which the Department is now operating. This includes: - assessing how to provide a timelier assessment of affordability, including bringing forward publication of the Plan, and capture uncertainty more realistically to understand the full extent of cost pressures and any 'real-time' mitigations that might be needed; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The Equipment Plan 2022 to 2032: We have assessed the Department's progress in implementing the recommendations from our previous reports (Appendix Two). This shows that the Department is taking action to make further improvements to its approach and the reliability of its assessment. This year we recommend that the Department assesses whether its planning processes are responsive and flexible enough for the rapidly changing context in which the Department is now operating. This includes: ensuring that it has sufficient flexibility to adapt its equipment programme to respond to changing threats. For example, it should consider how to better integrate its departmental assessment of capability risks and consider its ability to respond promptly to new demands. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The UK's F-35 capability: The MoD should develop, maintain and update an assessment of the value it intends to deliver throughout the life of the programme. This should include a clear weighting of all military and non-military benefits over the short, medium and long-term, for example in a balanced scorecard, to give decision-makers a fuller understanding of the programme's value and support to informed choices about trade-offs. (Acceptance: Under consideration, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The UK's F-35 capability: In support of this assessment, and to enable full accountability, the MoD should calculate the following costs, including all relevant Defence Lines of Development and operational costs, including: costs to date, including all sunk costs; 10-year forecast costs which take a prudent view on programme issues and plans which could materially affect costs; and building on its recent whole-life cost calculation to 2069, including adapting for different scenarios depending on the number and variant of equipment type ordered, and adding in other relevant Defence Lines of Development and operational costs. (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The UK's F-35 capability: As part of its wider plans for reform, the MoD should consider what structural changes it can make to support more effective F-35 programme delivery, including: - extending the length of Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) and other senior programme staff tenures; (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The UK's F-35 capability: As part of its wider plans for reform, the MoD should consider what structural changes it can make to support more effective F-35 programme delivery, including: - providing appropriate financial and commercial freedoms including increasing delegations; (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The UK's F-35 capability: As part of its wider plans for reform, the MoD should consider what structural changes it can make to support more effective F-35 programme delivery, including: simplifying lines of accountability so that, where appropriate, relevant Defence Lines of Development report more formally to the programme's SRO; (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The UK's F-35 capability: As part of its wider plans for reform, the MoD should consider what structural changes it can make to support more effective F-35 programme delivery, including: streamlining approvals regimes. In particular, the MoD should ensure that F-35 investment requests receive scrutiny based on the value of the specific request being made rather than the value of the total F-35 programme, thereby encouraging a proportionate scrutiny approach to lower value requests within the programme. (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The UK's F-35 capability: The MoD should tighten its measurement of the capability of the F-35, relating it to an objective measure based on the high-level characteristics and key user requirements derived from the Secretary of State's policy baseline relating to F-35. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Defence inventory management: To address its long-standing challenges in inventory management and successfully deliver its transformation initiatives, we recommend that the MoD: defines the levels of inventory needed to support its new strategic aims, and develops an understanding of what arrangements are needed to support these, and the barriers to achieving them (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Defence inventory management: To address its long-standing challenges in inventory management and successfully deliver its transformation initiatives, we recommend that the MoD: identifies and prioritises the resources it needs within Defence Support and across MoD's constituent organisations to ensure its transformation programmes can be implemented successfully to deliver the available financial and operational benefits. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Defence inventory management: To address its long-standing challenges in inventory management and successfully deliver its transformation initiatives, we recommend that the MoD: ensures that a management framework for raw material and consumable commodities is in operation, which controls demand and consumption, incentivises the upkeep of reserve items, and is supported by appropriate management information and tools; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Defence inventory management: To address its long-standing challenges in inventory management and successfully deliver its transformation initiatives, we recommend that the MoD: develops an assessment of the skills and resources its needs across inventory management, whether current resourcing levels are sufficient to meet these, and what resourcing risks it is carrying in its current and future operations. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Defence inventory management: To address its long-standing challenges in inventory management and successfully deliver its transformation initiatives, we recommend that the MoD: draws together the best practice from its current projects to identify surplus inventory, supported by a coherent plan covering its whole inventory estate. It must also ensure this approach is brought into its future inventory management outsourcing; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 18 historical audits (Rank: 17) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Audited body arrangements: achivement of aims, decision-making clarity, positioning for future challenges and risks
• Scope limitations: Funding
• House of Commons Library briefing: BBC Charter Renewal: a reading list
• Public Accounts Committee status: Inquiry opened [3 July 2026](https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8844/bbc-efficiency-and-transformation-programme/)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public body savings estimate
• Estimated value: £1.5bn total savings across the 2017-2027 Charter period (2016/17-2024/25 to date): £1bn delivered 2016/17-2021/22, plus £564m delivered 2022/23-2024/25. A further ~£0.4bn is targeted over the remaining Charter years, bringing the total to over £2bn by 2027
• Source: BBC Group, Efficiency and Transformation Review 2026

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• The BBC World Service's savings programme (HC 1382, published 2025-11-19)
• BBC Savings and Reforms (HC 958 (2021), published 2021-12-17)
• A digital BBC (HC 958 (2022), published 2022-12-14)
• The BBC's Strategic Financial Management Report (HC 1128, published 2021-01-20)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding The BBC World Service's savings programme: Consider how it can make better use of its extensive data on audience reach, such as the insight this can provide into audiences switching from traditional to digital platforms, to refine its assumptions about audience behaviour and ensure examples of good practice and learnings can be applied across multiple language services; (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding The BBC World Service's savings programme: Ensure that future savings and transformation programmes have clear non-financial metrics, or set out why it is not appropriate to do so, from the outset, which are then tracked during implementation. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding The BBC World Service's savings programme: Review the level of documentation and options considered by key decision-makers to ensure that planned changes being reviewed are likely to represent best value for money and provide sufficient clarity for why decisions were made. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding The BBC World Service's savings programme: Update its cost and monitoring systems to enable better linking of cost information, outputs (such as amount of content produced) and audience outcomes to support a more granular picture of value for money across the World Service portfolio. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Implemented A digital BBC: The BBC should: - develop its leadership structures to ensure effective senior challenge of its digital projects. The BBC's governance structures will need to evolve to ensure there is sufficient challenge to the corporation in terms of digital costs and opportunities and on the longer-term implications of decision-making. The BBC should regularly undertake a skills-based assessment of whether it has the right digital expertise in place at a senior level; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented A digital BBC: building on its December 2022 announcement, plan scenarios for how it could move between broadcast and internet services in the future. The BBC should identify, working with relevant stakeholders, including those at risk of being left behind, scenarios for its proposed role of digital-only linear channels in the future. This should include how it may need to divest itself of more traditional broadcast technologies, setting out a trajectory for how it may need to move increasingly to internet services (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented A digital BBC: set out how it plans to develop its personalisation strategy, including managing potential data risks. As it moves towards greater use of personal data and sign-in, the BBC now needs to fully develop a comprehensive personalisation strategy. This should include how it will manage potential compliance risks around the capture, storage and use of personal data, as well as how it will maintain transparency around this with its users; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented A digital BBC: improve the detail that supports its digital-first investment plans. The BBC should finalise work to underpin its May 2022 digital-first strategy. This should include developing a realistic, more detailed digital investment plan. In the light of its 2022 licence fee settlement, this needs to set out how savings will be achieved, whether further borrowing is required, and whether planned investment is sufficient to meet the estimated costs of its digital ambitions. The plan also needs to take into account forecasts of inflation, particularly where these are specific to the industry. (Status: Implemented)

Impacts tracker: NAO annual report

• GBP 24.200m financial impact recognized in FY 2025-26 from precedent 'The BBC's Strategic Financial Management Report' (Increased financial returns at the BBC) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 7.750m financial impact recognized in FY 2024-25 from precedent 'The BBC's Strategic Financial Management Report' (Increased financial returns at the BBC) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 43 historical audits (Rank: 9) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Highlight lessons and good practice: overall approach, case studies from the department
• Scope limitations: Not conclude on effectiveness or VFM
• House of Commons Library briefing: House of Commons Library Pension Briefings
• Public Accounts Committee status: Inquiry opened [3 July 2026](https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8848/dwp-followup-autumn-2026/)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public expenditure

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• Investigation into the Pensions Dashboards Programme (HC 732, published 2024-05-10)
• Progress in implementing Universal Credit (HC 552, published 2024-02-27)
• Transforming health assessments for disability benefits (HC 1512, published 2023-06-23)
• The Restart scheme for longterm unemployed people (HC 936, published 2022-12-02)
• Employment Support The Kickstart Scheme (HC 801, published 2021-11-26)

• Investigation Into Underpayments Of State Pension (HC 665, published 2021-09-22)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding Progress in implementing Universal Credit: DWP should continue to build its evidence base on how effectively UC is working, through monitoring, research and evaluation, as part of its ongoing work on benefits realisation generally and on assessing labour market impact specifically. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Implemented Progress in implementing Universal Credit: DWP should update its cost and benefit estimates to reflect the impact of the delay to the move of ESA claimants to UC. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Progress in implementing Universal Credit: DWP should continue the research and testing needed to develop a better understanding of why some legacy benefit claimants do not claim UC and take prompt action, where the evidence indicates it is needed, to adapt its approach and address barriers to claiming. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Progress in implementing Universal Credit: DWP should put in place arrangements, informed by its research and testing, to provide effective support for DWP legacy benefit claimants as potentially more vulnerable claimants move to UC. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Transforming health assessments for disability benefits: We recommend that DWP should: a review the Programme plan and produce an updated business case, incorporating the white paper reforms, including: . allowing for optimism bias and contingencies for test-and-learn activity, new legislation and development of the Health Assessment Service; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Transforming health assessments for disability benefits: b produce interim target operating models for the Programme at appropriate stages and continue to develop its test-and-learn approach including: - testing and learning what works best for the new services between now and 2029 so DWP and contractors are clear about what they need to implement; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Transforming health assessments for disability benefits: c be transparent about the Programme so that stakeholders including Parliament understand what it is trying to achieve, how it is performing and its flexibility to adapt to new initiatives by publishing: - its new business case; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Transforming health assessments for disability benefits: DWP should: a review the Programme plan and produce an updated business case, incorporating the white paper reforms, including:plans for different scenarios including risks from both interdependencies and external changes such policy and legislative change. This should inform the longer-term risks to Programme objectives individually and in aggregate; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Transforming health assessments for disability benefits: DWP should: a review the Programme plan and produce an updated business case, incorporating the white paper reforms, including: completing work to establish the criteria by which DWP will track the agile test-and-learn aspects of the Programme and assess whether the Health Assessment Service is ready to proceed to each new stage; and (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Transforming health assessments for disability benefits: DWP should: a review the Programme plan and produce an updated business case, incorporating the white paper reforms, including: demonstrating it has effective assurance and control over development of the Programme's digital architecture, including how the Programme will fit with DWP's other departmental digital initiatives, using oversight independent of the Programme; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Transforming health assessments for disability benefits: DWP should: b produce interim target operating models for the Programme at appropriate stages and continue to develop its test-and-learn approach including: setting out the data and evidence that the new services will need to produce to enable the test-and-learn activity, the tracking of benefits and the Programme's evaluation; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Transforming health assessments for disability benefits: DWP should: b produce interim target operating models for the Programme at appropriate stages and continue to develop its test-and-learn approach including: setting out how the Health Assessment Service will be benchmarked and use comparative data from the interim Functional Assessment Service; and (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Transforming health assessments for disability benefits: DWP should: b produce interim target operating models for the Programme at appropriate stages and continue to develop its test-and-learn approach including: putting in place the mechanisms to provide feedback to healthcare professionals and decision-makers and helping assure the consistency of decisions, for example by using data from mandatory reconsiderations and tribunals; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Transforming health assessments for disability benefits: DWP should: c be transparent about the Programme so that stakeholders including Parliament understand what it is trying to achieve, how it is performing and its flexibility to adapt to new initiatives by publishing: the metrics it will use to monitor the delivery of the Programme and the realisation of its benefits; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Transforming health assessments for disability benefits: DWP should: c be transparent about the Programme so that stakeholders including Parliament understand what it is trying to achieve, how it is performing and its flexibility to adapt to new initiatives by publishing: regular data on the performance of the services, including data on claimant outcomes for the interim Functional Assessment Service and the new Health Assessment Service by claimant characteristics; and (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Transforming health assessments for disability benefits: DWP should: c be transparent about the Programme so that stakeholders including Parliament understand what it is trying to achieve, how it is performing and its flexibility to adapt to new initiatives by publishing: data about and evaluations of the realisation of programme benefits. (Status: Implemented)

Impacts tracker: NAO annual report

• GBP 142m financial impact recognized in FY 2022-23 from precedent 'Progress in implementing Universal Credit' (Universal Credit Advances Fraud) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 82.912m financial impact recognized in FY 2025-26 from precedent 'Progress in implementing Universal Credit' (Universal Credit advances fraud) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 69m financial impact recognized in FY 2023-24 from precedent 'Progress in implementing Universal Credit' (Universal Credit Advances Fraud) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 69m financial impact recognized in FY 2024-25 from precedent 'Progress in implementing Universal Credit' (Universal Credit Advances Fraud) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 8.109m financial impact recognized in FY 2025-26 from precedent 'The Restart scheme for longterm unemployed people' (Level of contact required of participants in the Restart employment support scheme) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 41 historical audits (Rank: 12) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Audited body arrangements: awareness of trends, review of strategy, approach, efficient and effective use of resources
• Scope limitations: Taxpayers
• House of Commons Library briefing: Direct recovery of tax debts
• Public Accounts Committee status: Inquiry opened [3 July 2026](https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8850/hmrcs-tax-debt-reduction-efforts/)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Amount due for collection by tax authority
• Estimated value: £43.8bn tax debt balance (4.7% of receipts) in 2025/26
• Source: HMRC annual report an accounts, 2025/26, page 25

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic (HC 799, published 2021-11-17)
• Increasing the Effectiveness of Tax Collection: A Stocktake of Progress Since 2010 (HC 1029, published 2015-02-06)
• Managing Tax Compliance Following the Pandemic (HC 957, published 2022-12-16)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic: e) Identify how debt management needs to operate differently to deal with the changed nature and amount of debt. HMRC now has more old debt, and much of the pandemic debt will be difficult to collect quickly. Older debt becomes more difficult to trace as time passes so HMRC will need to establish and maintain contact with as many debtors as possible. Maximising collections may require different decisions about targeting its resources from those it would make in business-as-usual circumstances. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic: g) Extend its segmentation analysis by considering the scale of debt against income, and the sectors in which businesses operate, to be able to identify taxpayers who have done well during the pandemic. Successful applications for grant claims and loans may mean that companies do have cash to pay debts. (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Managing Tax Compliance Following the Pandemic: [HMRC should:] make further improvements to its processes for estimating compliance yield. This should include: - extending improvements made to quality assurance processes for downstream compliance yield to apply to upstream yield, including assurance work to test underlying evidence; - reviewing its assumptions in light of the current economic climate, including non-payment rates; and - updating how it selects and targets the sample of cases to test, so that a robust extrapolation of the errors can be used to calculate to what extent they affect the overall estimate of compliance yield each year. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Managing Tax Compliance Following the Pandemic: [HMRC should:] estimate and report the likely extent of official error affecting taxpayers, by either overcharging or undercharging them, in carrying out its compliance work. This should include ensuring it has the data needed to make a robust and representative estimate, and to determine whether additional testing is required. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Managing Tax Compliance Following the Pandemic: [HMRC should:] assess the potential impacts, on taxpayer behaviour and levels of non-compliance, of changes to compliance processes that it introduced or accelerated during the pandemic and has since made permanent, such as fewer face-to-face visits and digital filing of returns. (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Implemented Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic: HMRC should work with the rest of government, and, in particular, HM Treasury and the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy to: a) develop and communicate a strategy that sets out how recovering debt should change in light of the pandemic. This may require greater sharing of information to understand the taxpayer’s exposure, and identifying different timelines and parameters for chasing debt. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic: HMRC faces a large increase in debt and the number of taxpayers in debt. Taxpayers are taking more time to pay off debts, which may mean more contact points with HMRC and different rates of escalation. To manage this workload effectively, HMRC should do the following: b) In its planning for the new Spending Review period, HMRC should urgently consider increasing capacity using both recruitment and private sector options. It should explore how it can speed up its training so it can increase capacity more quickly. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic: c) Model the potential scale of work needed to manage debt effectively for different post-pandemic scenarios, in terms of speed and ease of debt collection. Assess whether HMRC has sufficient capacity to meet these scenarios. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic: d) Target much greater levels of return than before the pandemic. Given that taxpayers’ average levels of debt are much higher than before the pandemic, HMRC should aim for a significant increase in the total return from new and existing capacity. It should identify how much more resource it will need to bring in to bridge the gap at target rates of return. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic: HMRC needs to improve its understanding of customers to be able to support them and target activity appropriately. HMRC should do the following: f) Use a wider range of data to better understand how taxpayers’ financial positions have changed as a result of the pandemic. HMRC holds a rich source of data from taxes, but some lags significantly behind activity and does not provide insight into any other debts taxpayers may have. It should urgently seek access to wider government information on levels of indebtedness for individual taxpayers (for example, details of business support loans that customers have received). It does not normally draw on commercial data because of the cost, but it would now be justified in trialling the use of this because of the uncertainty that the pandemic has created. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic: h) Estimate how the scale of demand from specific pressures, such as new customers, vulnerable customers and companies becoming insolvent, may change, using proxy data sources where necessary. HMRC can then identify pressure points and adapt operational processes where needed, including when to refer customers to specialist teams dealing with vulnerable customers and insolvencies. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic: HMRC is restricted in its ability to increase capacity in the short term. In the long term, it should look to build on its existing plans to develop the tools and powers to better manage the range of taxpayers’ needs it encounters. It should do the following: i) In its planning for the new Spending Review period, HMRC should urgently consider whether resources are needed for more tools to support debt management (such as data analytics, the single customer account, and customer-facing systems – for example, online tools for setting up payment arrangements for business customers). (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic: j) Develop its understanding of the effectiveness of the different tools and interventions that it already uses and how they interact. Process mapping and data mining techniques can help it better plan a long-term strategy for reducing debt, allocate resources to where they are most effective and put in more resources where needed. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic: k) Adopt good practices from the private sector and from its own handling of debt during the pandemic on a permanent basis. In particular, a clear focus on affordability rather than repayment within a year could help customers maintain payments and reduce the workload of following-up failed arrangements. This should be explicit in HMRC’s internal guidance as well as external communications. HMRC should also routinely signpost the availability of independent debt advice and refer customers to debt charities where needed, which could also help reduce the burden on its extra support team. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic: l) Signal in its external communications that it will take a tough approach with companies that deliberately misuse insolvency rules. It has new powers to attach debts to the owners of companies that go bankrupt. As the UK emerges from the pandemic, it can make companies aware of these powers to act as a deterrent. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Tax Compliance Following the Pandemic: [HMRC should:] supplement its published compliance yield figures with more detailed commentary and analysis of trends between the different components of yield, and what these say about performance. This should indicate levels of uncertainty and could include sensitivity analysis of core assumptions used in the compliance yield estimate. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Tax Compliance Following the Pandemic: [HMRC should:] analyse the relative rates of return from different types of compliance intervention, and use it to help inform how it prioritises and allocates resources on areas that will be most impactful. This should build on its existing analysis of rates of return. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Tax Compliance Following the Pandemic: [HMRC should:] ensure that there is more consistent evaluation of the effectiveness of all types of its compliance interventions and use the findings to assess value for money. (Status: Implemented)

Impacts tracker: NAO annual report

• GBP 247.400m financial impact recognized in FY 2025-26 from precedent 'Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic' (Recovery of tax debt through increased capacity and use of the private sector) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 202.200m financial impact recognized in FY 2023-24 from precedent 'Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic' (Recovery of tax debt through increased capacity) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 199.800m financial impact recognized in FY 2024-25 from precedent 'Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic' (Recovery of tax debt through increased capacity) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 43m financial impact recognized in FY 2022-23 from precedent 'Managing Tax Debt Through the Pandemic' (Recovery of tax debt through increased capacity) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 37.700m financial impact recognized in FY 2023-24 from precedent 'Managing Tax Compliance Following the Pandemic' (Recovery of overpayment of COVID-19 ESS) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 28m financial impact recognized in FY 2022-23 from precedent 'Managing Tax Compliance Following the Pandemic' (Recovery of overpayment of COVID-19 employment support scheme) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 35 historical audits (Rank: 13) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Landscape overview: current schemes
• Scope limitations: Not conclude on effectiveness or VFM
• House of Commons Library briefing: Environmental Protections and Biodiversity Trends
• Public Accounts Committee status: No inquiry opened yet (Pending NAO publication)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public expenditure
• Estimated value: £887m of public sector funding was spent on biodiversity in England in 2023/24 - a 264% real-terms increase on the £244m spent in 2000/01 (2023/24 prices) when the time series began.
• Source: Defra, England Biodiversity Indicators, Indicator 15: Funding for biodiversity

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• The Nature for Climate Fund (HC 1743, published 2026-03-23)
• UK Emissions Trading Scheme (HC 950, published 2025-06-30)
• Regulating to achieve environmental outcomes (HC 1283, published 2023-04-21)
• Environmental regulation (HC 1483, published 2026-01-09)
• Implementing statutory biodiversity net gain (HC 729, published 2024-05-17)

• The Environmental Land Management Scheme (HC 664, published 2021-09-15)
• Environmental Tax Measures (HC 1203, published 2021-02-12)
• Achieving Governments Longterm Environmental Goals (HC 958, published 2020-11-11)
• Environmental Metrics Governments Approach To Monitoring The State Of The Natural Environment (HC 1866, published 2019-01-16)
• Planting Trees in England (HC 1085, published 2022-03-04)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding The Nature for Climate Fund: Defra should take the following actions. a Further improve its monitoring of intended beneficial outcomes from its investment in tree planting and peatland restoration activities. This would support assessments of value for money and better-informed investment decisions. It should: - continue building on its existing monitoring frameworks to inform its modelling and measurement of delivery against its targets for beneficial outcomes from tree planting and peatland restoration; and - support those delivering projects to capture necessary information against these frameworks, for example through use of efficient, digital technologies and by ensuring information requirements are comprehensive at the start to avoid later requests for data which have not been collected. Where there are gaps in current data, such as species mix, it should assess the costs and benefits of including these in future tree planting programmes. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding The Nature for Climate Fund: b Ensure there is a process to prioritise across different tree planting objectives b if and when required in future programmes. For example, between carbon reduction, timber production and nature improvements. This would help inform which delivery approaches and mechanisms are most appropriate (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding The Nature for Climate Fund: c Take a more proactive approach to managing tensions between the government's ambition to restore nature and other policy objectives that are putting development pressure on peatland and woodland. This should include working with other government departments to resolve tensions where policy responsibility is outside of Defra, such as housing development and renewable energy generation. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding The Nature for Climate Fund: d Use its monitoring of progress towards long-term targets for tree planting and peatland restoration by 2050 to make an ongoing assessment of whether they remain realistic. If targets are not achievable, Defra should reset them and set out the implications for achieving net zero by 2050. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding The Nature for Climate Fund: e Ensure delivery capacity is aligned with tree planting and peatland restoration targets. It should: - ensure capacity in delivery bodies is sufficient to deliver its targets for tree planting and peatland restoration to 2050; - continue to identify and support enabling activities that help build capacity and skills in relevant wider sectors, including contractor capacity; and - ensure learning from its enabling projects to-date is used to inform implementation of the Forestry Sector Skills Plan for England. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding The Nature for Climate Fund: f Where possible, reduce uncertainty for delivery partners and wider stakeholders, particularly during transition periods. This should include clarifying detailed plans and schemes for future peatland restoration and tree planting schemes to 2030 as soon as possible to maintain momentum. It should also look to ensure transition planning is built into all future programmes ' not only tree planting and peatland restoration ' where long-term certainty is important for capacity building and delivery (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding The Nature for Climate Fund: Defra is currently planning how tree planting and peatland restoration activities will be taken forward in future. Defra used the Programme to test different approaches. It should now take the opportunity to apply learning from the Programme to its design of future schemes, including doing the following. g Maximise learning from research projects and innovative pilot schemes. This should include ensuring rigorous approaches to evaluation and mechanisms for sharing and disseminating learning, within Defra and its arms-length bodies and across the wider forestry and peatland sectors, are in place. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding The Nature for Climate Fund: h Where appropriate, simplify the grant landscape and application processes for tree planting and peatland restoration schemes. This is important to make grants understandable and accessible, to reduce barriers to participation. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding The Nature for Climate Fund: i Create the right conditions to attract private investment in nature restoration activities. For example, this could include greater clarity and certainty around long-term objectives, having a consistent and credible pipeline of planned activity, and supporting development of new carbon markets. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding UK Emissions Trading Scheme: The Authority should: consider its approach to prioritising the development and introduction of new policies to take account of its own capacity and that of the Scheme participants. It should also consider its approach to working with the other parts of government with responsibilities for the UK's industrial and energy sector. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding UK Emissions Trading Scheme: The Authority should: collect evidence on the type and value of investment in low-carbon technologies made by the Scheme's participants, including the extent to which this has been driven by the carbon price. It should use this to help inform its understanding of the future path of emissions reductions under the Scheme and consequently how the Scheme will support emissions reductions in each of the sectors to which it applies. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding UK Emissions Trading Scheme: The Authority should: enhance its existing annual reports on the functioning of the UK ETS carbon market, by including a broader commentary on the Scheme's performance. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding UK Emissions Trading Scheme: The Authority should: improve its communications with the Climate Change Committee to help it anticipate the Committee's advice, and to support the Committee's understanding of its modelling. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding UK Emissions Trading Scheme: The Authority should: review the effectiveness of these arrangements as part of its approach to monitoring and evaluation, and take action in response to any limitations identified. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Environmental regulation: Defra and its regulators are embarking on a period of potentially significant reform of the regulatory system, taking several years. To help ensure a coherent, whole-system approach to maximise the benefits of these reforms, Defra should determine how it will make the most of whatever Parliamentary time is available for legislative change, and what alternative methods it can use to make improvements; (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Environmental regulation: Defra and its regulators are embarking on a period of potentially significant reform of the regulatory system, taking several years. To help ensure a coherent, whole-system approach to maximise the benefits of these reforms, Defra should: [ilot joint working for smaller projects or planning applications, based on learnings from the 'lead environmental regulator' approach currently being developed for major infrastructure projects; and (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Environmental regulation: Defra and its regulators are embarking on a period of potentially significant reform of the regulatory system, taking several years. To help ensure a coherent, whole-system approach to maximise the benefits of these reforms, Defra should: a work with the regulators to set a plan for how existing change programmes and new reforms ' including digital change ' will link together, so that they prioritise changes that can unlock the greatest gains and are planned and delivered in a coherent way. This should set out dependencies between actions, milestones for delivery, resource requirements and governance arrangements; (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Environmental regulation: Defra and its regulators are embarking on a period of potentially significant reform of the regulatory system, taking several years. To help ensure a coherent, whole-system approach to maximise the benefits of these reforms, Defra should: update funding and performance mechanisms to place greater emphasis on the extent to which the work of the regulators addresses environmental harm, rather than what activities they are doing; (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Environmental regulation: Defra and its regulators are embarking on a period of potentially significant reform of the regulatory system, taking several years. To help ensure a coherent, whole-system approach to maximise the benefits of these reforms, Defra should: investigate new approaches to sharing data including, for example, using open data and licensing models or trialling projects for data sharing between regulators that cover the same sectors; (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Environmental regulation: Defra and its regulators are embarking on a period of potentially significant reform of the regulatory system, taking several years. To help ensure a coherent, whole-system approach to maximise the benefits of these reforms, Defra should: define its risk appetite and the support it will provide to regulators if risks materialise, to support a culture of change and innovation. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Environmental regulation: Alongside developing their approach to major reforms, the regulators have opportunities to improve environmental regulation at an operational level. They should, over the next year: g prioritise building their capability around information and data that supports regulatory decision making and making best use of all regulatory tools: this should include: - more robust and consistent ways to assess and triage intelligence and identify where risks are greatest, and whether issues are best dealt with by local officers or national teams; - a more systematic approach to evaluating the impact of different regulatory approaches; and - working with Defra to ensure key decisions on, for example, resourcing and regulatory priorities are based on an assessment of total costs across the whole system including, for example, future costs of remedial clean-up activities if pollution and non-compliance increase; (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Environmental regulation: Alongside developing their approach to major reforms, the regulators have opportunities to improve environmental regulation at an operational level. They should, over the next year: work with Defra to make guidance easier to find and use, including developing real-world examples and scenarios alongside general guidance to support regulated entities to comply; (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Environmental regulation: Alongside developing their approach to major reforms, the regulators have opportunities to improve environmental regulation at an operational level. They should, over the next year: ensure they have systematic ways to incorporate the views of both front-line regulatory staff and regulated entities in the design of future operational processes and changes; they should also use these operational perspectives to support ongoing reform programmes. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding The Environmental Land Management Scheme: • identify the underlying reasons for the lower-than-expected level of interest in joining the first cohort of the pilot and develop measures to ensure future invitations achieve a better response across a wide range of farmers, targeting particular groups, if necessary; (Acceptance: Rejected, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Environmental Tax Measures: As custodians of the tax system, HMRC and HM Treasury are responsible for designing, monitoring and evaluating taxes, as well as ensuring they support government’s wider objectives, including the environment, and raise revenue. We recommend that the exchequer departments should: a) identify and monitor existing tax measures with a significant environmental impact. In doing so, they should consider the likely scale of the environmental impact (which may not be reflected in the revenue raised by a tax or the cost of a tax relief) and the level of monitoring that is appropriate. Where necessary, HMRC should work with other government departments to determine how tax measures can be monitored cost-effectively and proportionately; (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Environmental Tax Measures: b) clarify and set down their approach to designing, administering and evaluating tax measures with environmental or other policy objectives. The exchequer departments should build on existing work and formalise in tax policy-making and other relevant guidance the practical steps that their teams should take to comply with wider government guidance (such as The Green Book on appraisal and evaluation), including: • establishing how the success of tax measures will be assessed against the policy objective and tax revenue; and • monitoring impact, as well as revenue, by collecting and reporting data on the level of compliance and environmental outcomes; (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Environmental Tax Measures: c) develop clear criteria for prioritising which taxes with an impact on the environment to evaluate, taking into account risks to value for money and the costs of evaluation. Criteria could include the amount of tax revenue, the scale of the environmental impact expected, whether the tax is new, the extent of existing information and the risk of unwanted behavioural responses to the tax (such as environmentally harmful actions). The exchequer departments should consider value for money in determining how to review whether environmental taxes are fulfilling their objectives. They should consider the adequacy of existing evidence sources to support clear conclusions, and the cost of generating evidence to cover gaps. The exchequer departments should document their approach and findings from evaluations of environmental tax measures; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Planting Trees in England: Defra and the Forestry Commission should: a) set clear milestones for nursery and forestry workforce capacity from 2025 onwards based on the long-term trajectory for tree-planting set by the net zero strategy, and use these milestones to provide a target for these aspects to be achieved between now and 2025; (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Planting Trees in England: b) urgently establish what is required for the transition of tree-planting into ELM and develop its plans to achieve a smooth transition and ensure lessons learned in the early years can be carried forward; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Planting Trees in England: e) incorporate a measure of the proportion of woodlands that are well managed into its target for increasing woodland cover by 2050; and (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Implemented UK Emissions Trading Scheme: The Authority should: make sure, as it expands the Scheme into new sectors, the monitoring and verification arrangements it is developing reflects those sectors' specific characteristics. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Environmental Land Management Scheme: Defra should: • urgently agree a clear, realistic and logical set of strategic objectives for ELM, as required by HM Treasury; this should include developing its understanding of how it will prioritise its objectives and a plan to measure what is achieved against these objectives; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Environmental Land Management Scheme: • develop detailed plans that go beyond its short-term delivery priorities based on robust delivery schedules and a long-term detailed critical path; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Environmental Land Management Scheme: • regularly check deliverability leading up to the full launch of ELM in 2024; in particular, it should closely monitor the feasibility of delivering SFI2022 on time, based on a better understanding of how long individual tasks will take and what indicators should trigger a delay to the launch of SFI2022; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Environmental Land Management Scheme: • assess which elements of SFI2022 will not be fully tested before its launch and ensure appropriate mitigations are in place for the risks associated with rolling out the new scheme without full testing; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Environmental Land Management Scheme: • produce a clear plan, building on the work it has started, for how administrative savings will be achieved, including a timetable and who is accountable for delivery, and how its success will be measured; and (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Environmental Land Management Scheme: • develop detailed operational procedures against the fraud and error risks identified, and a plan to show how it will achieve and assess progress against its fraud and error objectives. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Environmental Tax Measures: d) quantify and publish the expected environmental impact of changes to taxes, where significant. This includes, for example, publishing the expected impact on CO2 emissions and use of plastic. They should monitor and report the actual impact of those changes over time. Where a decision is made not to publish information on the environmental impact of tax changes, this should be made explicit in Tax Information and Impact Notes; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Environmental Tax Measures: e) work with other departments to make visible how existing tax measures affect environmental goals. The exchequer departments should ensure the need to announce tax measures in the Budget does not act as a barrier to working with other departments to present an integrated picture of what tools are being used to deliver government’s environmental goals. The exchequer departments should look to ensure the role of tax continues to be considered in strategies for environmental goals such as net zero and waste; and (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Environmental Tax Measures: f) monitor the long-term impact of government’s environmental goals on tax revenue and ensure these are considered as part of risk management. This would include estimating, and reviewing when necessary, the impact on taxes of structural shifts in the economy. In doing so, the exchequer departments should build on both the risks set out by the Office for Budget Responsibility in its fiscal risk report and HM Treasury insights gathered in reviewing how the transition to net zero will be funded. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Planting Trees in England: c) ensure its monitoring and evaluation framework includes robust mechanisms for measuring progress against targets for wider benefits such as biodiversity, flood management and air quality; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Planting Trees in England: d) establish plans for how to address a range of scenarios, including where tree-planting rates are falling short of targets, particularly how it will prioritise between the number of trees planted and the wider benefits that new trees should achieve; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Planting Trees in England: f) work with the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury to identify and act on opportunities across government to support the achievement of government’s tree-planting targets. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Planting Trees in England: Our review of the Programme has identified factors that are likely to be replicated across government as it increases activity aimed at achieving its net zero target, particularly the perceived urgency with which action is required. We therefore recommend that the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, as department with overall responsibility for achieving net zero, should: g) review the lessons drawn from delivering the Programme at speed and consider how these can be shared, where appropriate, across government’s net zero projects and programmes, including establishing that targets are realistic and achievable. (Status: Implemented)

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 104 historical audits (Rank: 1) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Department arrangements: why past efforts have not been successful, whether current efforts will succeed
• Scope limitations: Individual A&E departments
• House of Commons Library briefing: Accident and Emergency Statistics: Demand, Performance and Pressure
• Public Accounts Committee status: Inquiry opened [3 July 2026](https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8852/nhs-accident-and-emergency-departments/)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Patient numbers (non-monetary)
• Estimated value: In June 2026 2.4m A&E attendances, 0.5m emergency admissions in England
• Source: NHS England, A&E Attendances and Emergency Admissions statistical commentary

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• Access to unplanned or urgent care (HC 1511, published 2023-06-21)
• NHS financial management and sustainability (2024) (HC 124 / HC 590, published 2024-07-23)
• Update on the New Hospital Programme (HC 1594, published 2026-01-16)
• Primary and community healthcare support for people living with frailty (HC 1518, published 2025-12-05)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding Update on the New Hospital Programme: a) DHSC must maintain rigorous oversight of the programme to keep it on track, learn lessons between schemes and waves of construction and respond to evolving developments in healthcare, if it is to deliver hospitals that meet the future needs of clinicians and patients. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Update on the New Hospital Programme: b) DHSC needs to get the design of Hospital 2.0 right, not just for the construction but also to achieve operational efficiencies in how new hospitals are run. In setting the timetable, DHSC needs to allow sufficient time to test that the design is fit for its stated purpose, with enough input from the staff and leaders of trusts who will work in and run new hospitals. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Update on the New Hospital Programme: c As it finalises its long-term plans, DHSC should improve the cost estimates of its schemes and ensure there is close alignment between the delivery profile and the funding profile. DHSC may need to adjust expectations of the funds required or bring plans for building some new hospitals forward. Any decision to bring plans forward should be weighed against the delivery risk of delivering more schemes in parallel, the wider capacity of the construction industry to support government infrastructure projects, and the risk of driving up prices. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Update on the New Hospital Programme: d) The programme's future demand model is a good example of a transparent, open-sourced and peer-reviewed model. DHSC should seek to make the outputs of the model widely available within the NHS so that local decision making is on a consistent basis, and ensure that sufficient feedback is in place to refine and improve the model. DHSC should share and disseminate this good practice more widely across government. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Update on the New Hospital Programme: e) There is a risk that if the shift of care from hospital to community does not develop as expected, DHSC could build hospitals that are too small. It should monitor this carefully and use the data to a) refine its model of demand and b) identify maximum tolerance levels should levels of demand not reduce as predicted. It should develop contingency arrangements should tolerance levels be exceeded. In developing contingency arrangements, DHSC should ensure it has considered potential investments in other parts of the health system, including primary care, as well as increases in hospital capacity. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Primary and community healthcare support for people living with frailty: GPs are not providing the level of support that people living with frailty need. To improve this, NHSE should set clear and consistent requirements for GPs to assess and support people living with frailty, including the proportion and frequency of assessments and the minimum acceptable care to be provided. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Primary and community healthcare support for people living with frailty: NHSE needs to put in place systematic follow-up for unexplained variations in performance against requirements it has set in the GP contract. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Primary and community healthcare support for people living with frailty: NHSE should set out a timetable for its work to standardise community health services and details on how community health services will align with and support the move to neighbourhood health services. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Primary and community healthcare support for people living with frailty: NHSE should assess the added value of collating and quality assuring consistent data from general practices on the numbers of frailty assessments conducted and the support provided as a result. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Primary and community healthcare support for people living with frailty: NHSE needs to establish a direct measure of how well the NHS maintains the independence of the population rather than relying on measures that focus on the perceived burden on the NHS and on hospitals, in particular. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Primary and community healthcare support for people living with frailty: There are many piecemeal initiatives for frailty but no real understanding of the impact they make on people's health. DHSC should commission a systematic evaluation to demonstrate whether its patchwork of frailty initiatives is working together to provide an effective and holistic approach to supporting people living with frailty. This should include urgent community response, the enhanced Health in Care Homes programme, virtual wards, community health services and neighbourhood health. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Primary and community healthcare support for people living with frailty: To help bring about integration, DHSC and NHSE should create more effective mechanisms to enable service level funding to flow from acute care to community health services. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 43 historical audits (Rank: 10) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Department arrangements: programme design, implementation, local delivery, oversight, monitoring and evaluation
• House of Commons Library briefing: Counter-extremism policy: an overview
• Public Accounts Committee status: Inquiry opened [3 July 2026](https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8853/reducing-radicalisation-the-prevent-programme/)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public expenditure
• Estimated value: £38.7m Prevent Budget (Prevent Delivery Unit plus Counter Radicalisation and Enablers Unit)
• Source: Written Parliamentary Answer to David Simmonds MP, Home Office, answered 4 Dec 2025 (via parallelparliament.co.uk / Hansard)

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• An analysis of the asylum system (HC 1517, published 2025-12-10)
• Tackling violence against women and girls (HC 547, published 2025-01-31)
• Electronic monitoring: improving resilience to meet increasing demand (HC 266, published 2026-07-10)
• Improving resettlement support for prison leavers to reduce reoffending (HC 1282, published 2023-05-12)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding An analysis of the asylum system: The government should, by the end of 2026, set out and present to Parliament a strategic plan for implementing the proposed new asylum model that supports long-term sustainability and reduces reliance on short-term, reactive responses that have resulted in avoidable costs and undesirable outcomes. It should then publish an annual assessment of progress. The plan should: (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding An analysis of the asylum system: articulate high-level objectives for the asylum system as a whole; (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding An analysis of the asylum system: acknowledge the fundamental constraints that contribute to people seeking asylum spending extended periods waiting in the system and clarify how it will optimise value for money and ensure effective operation given these constraints, recognising that some may not be fully resolvable and will require approaches that work around them; and (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding An analysis of the asylum system: be explicit that to deliver the objectives and value for money in the long term, the government will need to ensure the asylum system is resilient and able to adapt to reasonably foreseeable volatility in demand. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding An analysis of the asylum system: To deliver and sustain the new model, the government should establish a lasting framework of joined-up governance and accountability for value for money across the asylum system, supported by senior leadership. The framework should enable shared decision-making on policy and resource allocation, manage trade-offs based on overall effectiveness, and prevent pressures being shifted between parts of the system. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding An analysis of the asylum system: The government should publish a broad and balanced set of system indicators that reflect outcomes, quality, and efficiency for people seeking asylum, taxpayers, and citizens. The government should report to Parliament on these indicators as part of its annual assessment in a way that: (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding An analysis of the asylum system: provides transparency on the overall state of the asylum system, acknowledging factors outside government control; (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding An analysis of the asylum system: shows progress over time by reporting year-on-year trends and explaining the drivers behind performance changes; and (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding An analysis of the asylum system: shows how the government plans to close performance gaps and improve delivery of the objectives. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding An analysis of the asylum system: The Home Office should work with the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) and other relevant partners in the asylum system to develop a blueprint and implementation plan for the data framework the asylum system needs in the long term. This will include understanding: (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding An analysis of the asylum system: the current effect on outcomes, quality, efficiency and cost across the asylum system of data quality problems and the lack of a single reliable record on each person seeking asylum; (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding An analysis of the asylum system: the causes of the key data quality problems and where in the system they arise; and (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding An analysis of the asylum system: what technical, architectural or behavioural changes would be needed to address these problems and what those changes would cost. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding An analysis of the asylum system: The government should: bring together and build on the modelling and system design work from the Home Office and MoJ, alongside local authority analysis from MHCLG to provide a basis for joined-up policy design and decision-making; and (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding An analysis of the asylum system: taking into account the Magenta Book principle of proportionate evaluation, ensure that interventions are supported by an evidence base and theory of change, including relevant international evidence where appropriate, an assessment of expected costs and benefits across the end-to-end asylum system, and an evaluation plan, and these are published unless there is an overriding reason why that would not be appropriate. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Tackling violence against women and girls: The Home Office, as the lead department for the Safer Streets mission and tackling violence against women and girls, should: a establish a shared vision for how the government's target to halve violence and women and girls will be met, by: - agreeing a common definition of VAWG across government and policing and identifying the data that will be used to measure this; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Tackling violence against women and girls: The Home Office, as the lead department for the Safer Streets mission and tackling violence against women and girls, should: b strengthen accountability for delivering against the government's target by: - establishing a cross-government team, based in the Home Office, to lead on the implementation of the new strategy; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Tackling violence against women and girls: The Home Office, as the lead department for the Safer Streets mission and tackling violence against women and girls, should: b strengthen accountability for delivering against the government's target by: - reviewing existing governance structures and adapting these to align incentives and sharpen accountability for delivering; (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Tackling violence against women and girls: The Home Office, as the lead department for the Safer Streets mission and tackling violence against women and girls, should: b strengthen accountability for delivering against the government's target by: - coordinating available funding for tackling VAWG, including through considering a joint spending review bid for the strategy. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Tackling violence against women and girls: The Home Office, as the lead department for the Safer Streets mission and tackling violence against women and girls, should: c embed learning and evaluation through the new strategy by: - developing and embedding a long-term evaluation plan into the strategy backed by appropriate resources; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Tackling violence against women and girls: The Home Office, as the lead department for the Safer Streets mission and tackling violence against women and girls, should: c embed learning and evaluation through the new strategy by: - encouraging local innovation, particularly on preventing VAWG, and learning from this to identify opportunities to scale up effective interventions. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Improving resettlement support for prison leavers to reduce reoffending: To evidence the impact of its Commissioned Rehabilitative Services, HMPPS should consider implementing a revised approach to its future set of contracts so that it enables providers to systematically report on outcomes achieved for offenders. Where appropriate, HMPPS should verify providers' reporting on outcomes achieved for offenders through validating supporting evidence. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Improving resettlement support for prison leavers to reduce reoffending: Commencing by November 2023, MoJ and HMPPS should develop a long-term strategy to manage increased demand for resettlement services. This should be informed by their understanding of local prison- and community-based probation teams' capacity to accommodate higher caseloads. HMPPS should use this information to identify which areas of resettlement activity could be de-prioritised, streamlined or re-sequenced. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Implemented Tackling violence against women and girls: The Home Office, as the lead department for the Safer Streets mission and tackling violence against women and girls, should: a establish a shared vision for how the government's target to halve violence and women and girls will be met, by: - developing a system-level plan for halving VAWG that is informed by an evidence-based theory of change, places a greater emphasis on prevention, and is clear what all delivery partners must contribute. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving resettlement support for prison leavers to reduce reoffending: To improve accountability, government bodies on the Board with primary responsibility for improving prison leavers' accommodation, employment and substance misuse treatment outcomes - MoJ, HMPPS, DWP, NHSE, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities and the Department of Health & Social Care - should engage with relevant stakeholders and publish a report in early 2024-25 setting out: - clear roles and responsibilities in the resettlement system across government departments, including governance and oversight arrangements; ' interdependencies between departments' work; - their consideration of developing shared performance measures between departments to embed stronger incentives for improvement; and - progress on improving coordination and resolving barriers to collecting and sharing data. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving resettlement support for prison leavers to reduce reoffending: By November 2023, MoJ and HMPPS should finalise evaluation plans for HMPPS's initiatives to improve prison leavers' access to employment. Where feasible, they should commit to comparing outcomes with control groups and use data and intelligence on trends in local and regional labour markets to isolate the impact of its initiatives. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving resettlement support for prison leavers to reduce reoffending: By April 2025, HMPPS should complete analysis to understand the causes of variation in resettlement outcomes for prison leavers across different demographic groups and areas of the country. It should use this analysis to inform future changes to resettlement services. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving resettlement support for prison leavers to reduce reoffending: By April 2024, HMPPS and DWP should complete analysis to understand overlaps and gaps in services using high-quality data on what support its local staff are providing to prison leavers. They should use this information to provide assurance that government's delivery of employment, training and benefits support services do not unnecessarily overlap and exploit opportunities to achieve savings. (Status: Implemented)

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 104 historical audits (Rank: 1) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Department arrangements: oversight, aims and objectives, rationale, changes to ICB functions, ICB consolidation and staff reduction. Draw on external findings
• House of Commons Library briefing: NHS Integrated Care Boards (ICBs)
• Public Accounts Committee status: Inquiry opened [3 July 2026](https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8851/integrated-care-boards-reorganisation/)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public expenditure
• Estimated value: ICB running costs totalled approximately £1.08bn in 2022-23; Note: the ICB core services allocations in 2025-26 was £125.8bn
• Source: NHS England, ICB running cost allocations 2022-23; House of Commons Library Briefing CBP-10031

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• Review Of The Role And Costs Of Clinical Commissioning Groups (HC 1783, published 2018-12-18)
• Investigation Into Changes To Community Rehabilitation Company Contracts (HC 676, published 2017-12-19)
• The Home Office's asylum accommodation contracts (HC 874, published 2025-05-07)
• Introducing Integrated Care Systems: joining up local services to improve health outcomes (HC HC655, published 2022-10-14)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Implemented Introducing Integrated Care Systems: joining up local services to improve health outcomes: a) DHSC and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities should, by April 2023, establish transparent arrangements across government and with wider stakeholders to tackle the drivers of poor health outcomes, including education, employment, benefits, and transport; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Introducing Integrated Care Systems: joining up local services to improve health outcomes: b) to assist ICSs with their workforce planning, as well as providing public accountability on an issue crucial to the future of the NHS, DHSC should publish, by December 2022, both the Health Education England-led assessment of the strategic drivers for the health and care workforce, and the long term NHSE plan for growing and retaining the NHS workforce to support NHS service delivery. NHSE should then publish progress updates at least annually setting out whether and how the plan has changed in the past year, and what progress has been made against the plan's objectives; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Introducing Integrated Care Systems: joining up local services to improve health outcomes: c) by April 2023, NHSE should set out plans to identify unavoidable cost differences in the provision of healthcare by different trusts and take account of them in the formula for allocating funding to ICBs. This should include a timetable for addressing them and changes it has made to the 2023-24 allocation process; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Introducing Integrated Care Systems: joining up local services to improve health outcomes: d) by April 2023, NHSE should fully align its oversight of ICBs with the strategic objectives for ICSs. Specifically, it should: - agree with ICBs what they can realistically deliver against each of the four purposes, taking account of individual ICSs' local context and priorities; and ensure its annual assessments of ICBs' performance include an evidence-based assessment of the effectiveness of joint working and delivery with partners beyond the NHS, as well as their delivery of its core NHS national priorities; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Introducing Integrated Care Systems: joining up local services to improve health outcomes: e) NHSE should evaluate whether it can draw lessons from the simplified system of commissioning and contracting arrangements put in place for the NHS during 2020-21 and 2021-22, and streamline the requests made to front-line providers while retaining the information necessary for effective governance. (Status: Implemented)

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 57 historical audits (Rank: 6) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Central government arrangements: risk function, profession, influence over decisions and outcomes
• House of Commons Library briefing: N/A (Pending briefing publication)
• Public Accounts Committee status: No inquiry opened yet (Pending NAO publication)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Unknown

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• The Government's Preparedness for the Covid-19 Pandemic: Lessons for Government on Risk Management (HC 735, published 2021-11-19)
• Government workforce planning – lessons learned (HC 267, published 2026-07-15)
• Financial Management in Government (HC 131, published 2013-06-13)
• The UK's resilience to severe space weather (HC 1737, published 2026-03-20)
• Government resilience: extreme weather (HC 314, published 2023-12-06)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding The Government's Preparedness for the Covid-19 Pandemic: Lessons for Government on Risk Management: The Cabinet Office should establish who leads and manages whole-system risks. Working with other departments, it should clarify and publicise the government’s risk appetite for whole-system emergencies as a basis for proportionate planning across government for these types of risk event. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The Government's Preparedness for the Covid-19 Pandemic: Lessons for Government on Risk Management: The Cabinet Office should support government departments to take stock of how funding for risk management and national resilience is prioritised and managed. There should be deliberate consideration of the investment required to ensure that risk management and national resilience have an appropriate level of funding and resourcing compared with other national and departmental priorities, at both departmental and central government levels. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The Government's Preparedness for the Covid-19 Pandemic: Lessons for Government on Risk Management: The Cabinet Office should work with government departments to ensure that their risk management, business continuity and emergency planning are more comprehensive, holistic and integrated. This involves ensuring that the government can rely on timely and good-quality data in the event of a major emergency; improving coordination and information sharing between the CCS and risk managers in departments; applying best practice in risk management, horizon scanning, stress-testing and business continuity and emergency planning; collaborating both internationally and with the private sector to identify and manage cross-economy risks and global interdependencies; and considering what broader aspects of national resilience need to be strengthened to ensure that the residual risk is in line with the government’s risk tolerance. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The Government's Preparedness for the Covid-19 Pandemic: Lessons for Government on Risk Management: The Cabinet Office should strengthen oversight and assurance arrangements over preparations for system-wide emergencies. These should include publishing standards against which lead government departments, supporting departments and other public sector organisations can assess their level of preparedness for major emergencies, developing external assurance processes to assess, on a regular basis, whether there are adequate preparations in place that meet those standards and can be activated rapidly in the event of an emergency, and ensuring that all departments that are involved in the response to whole-system or catastrophic risks have coordinated plans that cover the whole range of societal and wider impacts. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The Government's Preparedness for the Covid-19 Pandemic: Lessons for Government on Risk Management: The Cabinet Office and other government departments should ensure that lessons from simulation exercises are communicated and embedded across government. Simulation exercises are an effective way to spend resources to improve the management of low-probability high-impact risks, but lessons learned must be promptly disseminated and implemented to achieve value from undertaking these exercises. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government resilience: extreme weather: The Cabinet Office, working with other departments, should strengthen leadership, accountability and assurance arrangements for the management of extreme weather risks. This could build on the new Climate Resilience Board that will oversee strategic, cross-cutting climate adaptation and resilience issues. It needs to cover the whole risk lifecycle and prevention activity across government to ensure action is taken where needed. This recommendation could equally apply to other national and cross-cutting risks that require cross-government action. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government resilience: extreme weather: The Cabinet Office should set out what a resilient UK looks like, a strategy to deliver this, and the specific roles of government, the private and voluntary sectors and the public. The Cabinet Office, working with LGDs should: - assess the current level of risk and how that risk is changing over time; - decide what is the tolerable and acceptable level for that risk (or sets of similar risks) and set out 'what good looks like' now and in the future; - identify the gap between this and the current performance and position; - produce costed long-term plans, in which there is a high degree of confidence in delivery, for how to drive down the risk to an acceptable level; - bring this information together for a coordinated and prioritised approach to investment (see recommendation e); and - monitor and track the progress in driving down the risk to the acceptable level. (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government resilience: extreme weather: The Cabinet Office, working with HM Treasury and other departments, should develop a coordinated, prioritised approach to investment in climate and wider resilience by 2025, and implement it by 2028. While government has committed to developing this approach by 2030, it should bring forward its delivery as a coordinated, prioritised approach is urgently needed to ensure that investment in resilience is cost-effective and achieves the greatest benefits. (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government resilience: extreme weather: LGDs, working with the Cabinet Office, should develop a set of resilience standards for infrastructure and give regulators consistent climate resilience roles. Government has already committed to improve standards for resilience by 2030. It should set out a pathway to deliver these standards. Giving regulators consistent roles would enable greater coordination across regulators to improve resilience across sectors. (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government resilience: extreme weather: LGDs, working with HM Treasury and the Cabinet Office, should encourage greater investment in climate adaptation from the private sector. This might involve publicising the benefits the private sector derives from adaptation, expanding the use of UK green gilts or introducing similar financial instruments to mobilise private sector resources for climate adaptation; and facilitating risk-sharing by expanding the scope of risk-pooling arrangements. The private sector has a pivotal role to play in managing extreme weather risk and other risks related to climate change. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Implemented The Government's Preparedness for the Covid-19 Pandemic: Lessons for Government on Risk Management: The Cabinet Office and HM Treasury should support departments to reduce variation in capacity, capability and maturity of risk management, emergency planning and business continuity across government departments. This should include providing advice on strengthening leadership of risk management, business continuity and disaster recovery; the basic level of capability needed in each department; and plans to address any gaps. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Government resilience: extreme weather: The Cabinet Office should review the current risk and resilience structures and identify any gaps in its system-wide oversight of national risks. Once this review is completed it should consider how to address any gaps identified, including consideration of the merits of a Chief Risk Adviser. (Status: Implemented)

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 21 historical audits (Rank: 15) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Department arrangements: the VFM cases of DESNZ, Ofgem, NESO, department approach to programme set-up, action to monitor progress
• Scope limitations: Delivery
• House of Commons Library briefing: Electricity grids
• Public Accounts Committee status: Inquiry opened [3 July 2026](https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8846/clean-power-by-2030-upgrading-the-grid/)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Estimated investment value by industry
• Estimated value: £68.25bn combined, as two distinct tracked programmes: Centralised Strategic Network Plan from RIIO-ET3 onwards - £29.16bn (Design and Planning phase, 2026-2036); Accelerated strategic transmission investment from RIIO-ET3 onwards - £39.09bn (already In Construction, 2026-2035)
• Source: NISTA National Infrastructure Pipelinee (pipeline updated March 2026, 734 projects/£718bn total)

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• Regulating water, energy and broadband to protect consumers in vulnerable circumstances (HC 27, published 2026-06-10)
• Sizewell C (HC 33, published 2026-05-20)
• Regulating for investment and outcomes in the water sector (HC 853, published 2025-04-25)
• Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage programme (HC 120, published 2024-07-23)
• The Energy Supplier Market (HC 68, published 2022-06-22)

• Electricity Networks (HC 42, published 2020-01-30)
• The Economic Regulation Of The Water Sector (HC 487, published 2015-10-14)
• Infrastructure investment: the impact on consumer bills (HC 812, published 2013-11-13)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding Regulating for investment and outcomes in the water sector: For future plans, Defra needs to understand the costs and deliverability of targets and the impact on customers' bills. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Regulating for investment and outcomes in the water sector: Defra should consult on options to ensure delivery of a coherent national system plan for water, including balancing trade-offs between different duties. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Regulating for investment and outcomes in the water sector: Defra should address gaps in responsibilities, particularly around the wastewater network, and ensure regulators work together to achieve the same outcomes for the environment and customers. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Regulating for investment and outcomes in the water sector: EA, Ofwat and DWI should align deadlines and limit inconsistencies in planning timelines and assumptions. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Regulating for investment and outcomes in the water sector: Given the limited progress in developing a common understanding of asset health, Ofwat should continue to work with the sector, EA and DWI, reach a conclusion, and deliver its Roadmap for enhancing asset health understanding in the water sector on time. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Regulating for investment and outcomes in the water sector: Before the development of PR29 methodology, Ofwat should consider whether it can act to simplify the price review methodology. This should include evaluating the impact of outcome incentives on company performance, the impact of cost benchmarking on company behaviours and financial resilience, and the impact of price control deliverables on performance. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Regulating for investment and outcomes in the water sector: Before the development of PR29 methodology, Ofwat should seek to understand whether successful Innovation Fund projects are being taken up across the sector and the impact. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Regulating for investment and outcomes in the water sector: Ofwat should develop a view on how to identify and plan for investment needs over the long term and work with Defra and the other regulators to improve transparency and predictability in light of the recent sector downgrades. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding The Energy Supplier Market: Ofgem should: e) define and agree a set of a set of objectives for its regulation of the retail market against which it should review and report its performance at least annually. This should be a balanced set of measures based on available qualitative and quantitative information relating to consumer outcomes on issues such as price; quality of service; stability and predictability of tariffs; and delivery of the innovation needed to achieve net zero. This should include input from all the parts of Ofgem that interact with the retail market; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Implemented Regulating for investment and outcomes in the water sector: EA must understand whether actions in water company plans are being delivered and having the intended impact and delivering statutory environmental targets. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Energy Supplier Market: The Department and Ofgem together should: a) in line with plans to revisit the Energy Retail Market Strategy, set a date by which they will review the changes needed to retail market regulation so that the supplier retail market aligns with the achievement of net zero. They should also establish interim milestones, including establishing by the end of 2022 high-level principles around the role suppliers will play in achieving net zero with which to test whether any short-term financial regulations are compatible with these principles; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Energy Supplier Market: c) undertake a review of the costs and benefits of the price cap to inform decisions about the operation of the cap and alternative forms of price protection. This should include consideration of whether alternative types of price cap, such as one that focuses on vulnerable households or is based on the relative cost of different tariffs a supplier offers, better achieves its objectives for the retail market; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Energy Supplier Market: b) establish a process by the end of 2022 for considering how new interventions in the retail market, like the price cap, would react in a wide range of scenarios, to mitigate the risk that interventions implemented at pace do not sufficiently consider the risks and unintended impacts; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Energy Supplier Market: d) review and update the SOLR process in response to issues which have emerged over the last year. This includes issues that arose in its implementation, such as uncertainty over credit balances caused by delays in the transfer of customer information, and addressing the imbalance of risk between suppliers and consumers, which currently enables suppliers to exit from the market with little risk and even potentially to make a financial return. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Energy Supplier Market: f) build regular review points into its current round of changes to the regulation of suppliers, including the new financial responsibility principles, for it to consider whether its approach continues to support its range of objectives, including the achievement of net zero and ensuring consumers do not overpay for energy. This should include consideration of whether it is continuing to balance adequately the need for financial resilience and enabling innovative business models to enter the market; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Energy Supplier Market: g) as part of its regular reviews, consider whether it is able to monitor adequately compliance with its new rules around financial responsibility. This should include considering whether it has sufficient understanding of the business models that suppliers use. It should also consider whether its powers and resources enable it to enforce the new rules and address any issues blocking its ability to take rapid and effective compliance and enforcement action against suppliers where necessary. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Electricity Networks: To ensure the interests of consumers are protected, Ofgem should: a) do more to demonstrate that regulation is working for consumers, by developing and publishing summary indicators of the overall value for money of networks over time and across price control periods, and improving the quality of the underlying official statistics with the Office for National Statistics; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Electricity Networks: b) improve the evidence base on the empirical impact of regulatory decisions on investor confidence and cost of capital, and use this evidence to inform major decisions in future; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Electricity Networks: c) assess the extent to which cost targets set in RIIO-1 were too generous in the light of likely outturn expenditure, and use this information to inform its approach to assessing individual network company business plans for RIIO-2; and (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Electricity Networks: d) ensure network companies make it clear to the public how much tax they pay; how executives are rewarded and how this links to quality of service for customers; and how dividend policies ensure companies remain sustainable. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Electricity Networks: BEIS, working with the Department for Transport, should: e) work with Ofgem to obtain as much clarity as possible on the implications of heat and transport decarbonisation for future network requirements, in advance of Ofgem making significant decisions on how distribution networks will be regulated in RIIO-2. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Electricity Networks: BEIS should: f) as part of its 2020 review on industry governance, investigate the potential benefits of more strategic coordination in the energy system; and (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Electricity Networks: g) bring forward further heat decarbonisation policies that ensure the achievement of carbon emissions targets in the 2020s. (Status: Implemented)

Impacts tracker: NAO annual report

• GBP 109.840m financial impact recognized in FY 2025-26 from precedent 'Electricity Networks' (Electricity networks (cost of capital)) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 85.910m financial impact recognized in FY 2024-25 from precedent 'Electricity Networks' (Electricity Networks (cost of capital)) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 80.650m financial impact recognized in FY 2023-24 from precedent 'Electricity Networks' (Electricity Networks (cost of capital)) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 71.600m financial impact recognized in FY 2022-23 from precedent 'Electricity Networks' (Electricity Networks (cost of capital)) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 64.800m financial impact recognized in FY 2021-22 from precedent 'Electricity Networks' (Electricity Networks (cost of capital)) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 28 historical audits (Rank: 14) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Department arrangemetns: system awareness, governance, investment, contingency planning, resilience
• House of Commons Library briefing: Cybersecurity in the UK
• Public Accounts Committee status: No inquiry opened yet (Pending NAO publication)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public expenditure
• Estimated value: Unquantified spend on cyber. £2.8bn annual spend on purchasing goods and services (Departmental group).
• Source: Ministry of Justice Annual Report and Accounts 2024-25

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• Government cyber resilience (HC 546, published 2025-01-29)
• Progress Of The 2016 2021 National Cyber Security Programme (HC 1988, published 2019-03-15)
• Update On The National Cyber Security Programme (HC 626, published 2014-09-10)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding Government cyber resilience: Within six months, GSG should develop, share and start using a cross-government implementation plan for the Government Cyber Security Strategy: 2022-2030 ('the Strategy'). GSG should refresh it regularly, include how the government is responding to new and severe cyber threats not covered by the Strategy and: - bring together a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation framework that allows GSG to measure departments' performance, track and show progress towards the Strategy's outcomes, and evaluate what is working well or not, including an assessment of lessons learned from previous efforts to attract, upskill and retain cyber skills in government; and - identify the priority actions the government needs to take to be cyber resilient by 2030, the government organisations that are accountable for those actions, the timescales within which those actions need to be taken, and the extent to which those organisations have the resource and levers needed to complete their actions. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government cyber resilience: GSG should strengthen GovAssure's focus on improving cyber resilience outcomes. GSG should: - continue building the capacity to support departments in developing and implementing targeted improvement plans, and monitoring and evaluating progress against them; - continue developing how GovAssure data can be used to measure departments' performance as part of its comprehensive monitoring and evaluation framework; and baseline government organisations' cyber resilience against organisations that are responsible for UK critical national infrastructure. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government cyber resilience: GSG should work with CDDO to take a more rigorous approach to understanding and mitigating the risk to government organisations' cyber resilience caused by legacy IT systems. Learning from GovAssure and the legacy IT risk assessment framework, this approach should: identify the legacy systems in use across government; understand the risk these legacy IT systems pose to cyber resilience, the extent of departments' remediation plans, and be risk-based when prioritising security enhancements; - assess and strengthen the security enhancements that are in place; and - be considered alongside GovAssure when measuring government organisations' cyber resilience and performance. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government cyber resilience: GSG should design regular communications to ensure that senior leaders and other decision-makers across government understand the cyber threat, how it is relevant to their business outcomes and what they can do about it. GSG should embed this into departments' board and programme governance. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government cyber resilience: Government departments should urgently strengthen their own governance, accountability and reporting arrangements around cyber risk. In their annual security appraisal, accounting officers should assess their progress and performance in meeting the cyber security standards set out in Functional Standard GovS 007: Security (the Security Standard), which HM Treasury mandated in 2021. To show the importance of building a cyber security culture, accounting officers should: - ensure that membership of their most senior decision-making board includes at least one digital leader with cyber expertise and one non-executive director with cyber expertise; - engage with GSG to agree how the department will contribute to GSG's cross-government implementation plan; - understand the cyber risk posed by their most critical IT systems and create and test appropriate incident response plans; and - commission reporting that shows progress made in implementing the Strategy. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government cyber resilience: Working in alignment with GSG's government skills strategy, departments should make and enact plans to fill the cyber skills gaps in their workforces. Within the next year, they should: - undertake a gap analysis of their current cyber workforce to identify what skills are needed to enable effective implementation of the Strategy; and - present clear and detailed improvement plans to GSG. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Implemented Government cyber resilience: Within six months, GSG should set out how the whole of government needs to operate differently, and what is needed for this transformation to be effective, so that the government can achieve its goals for cyber security and resilience. GSG should work with the relevant bodies at the centre of government to develop and agree what governance, type and amount of funding, people and skills, and organisational structure and mandate will best enable government to achieve its objectives. This should include setting out how the centre of government will: - provide different types of support, capability and guidance to departments; - build cyber security into its digital and technology strategies, plans and activity from the outset; and - clarify which aspects of cyber risk and resilience departments, GSG and other organisations are responsible for and when that responsibility moves from one organisation to another. (Status: Implemented)

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 104 historical audits (Rank: 1) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Government arrangements: plnaning, operational capability, decision-making arrangements
• House of Commons Library briefing: Public spending during the covid-19 pandemic
• Public Accounts Committee status: No inquiry opened yet (Pending NAO publication)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public expenditure
• Estimated value: Estimated cost of Covid-19 measures: £311bn - £407bn (NAO/HMT/OBR/IMF). Note: the public inquiry running costs are disclosed. UK Covid-19 response unit costs: £31m (staffs and legal, Q4 2025-26)
• Source: House of Commons Library (CPB-9309) , uk-covid-19-inquiry-response-costs-for-quarter-4-2526

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• DCMS's management of its COVID-19 loan book (HC 472, published 2024-12-18)
• Preparedness for online safety regulation (HC 1660, published 2023-07-12)
• COVID-19 business grant schemes (HC 1200, published 2023-03-23)
• Delivery of employment support schemes in response to the COVID-19 pandemic (HC 656, published 2022-10-13)
• Implementing Employment Support Schemes In Response To The Covid 19 Pandemic (HC 862, published 2022-10-13)

• Managing Cross Border Travel During The Covid 19 Pandemic (HC 1148, published 2022-04-21)
• The Rollout Of The Covid 19 Vaccination Programme In England (HC 1106, published 2022-02-25)
• The Governments Preparedness For The Covid 19 Pandemic Lessons For Government On Risk Management (HC 735, published 2021-11-19)
• Investigation Into The Housing Of Rough Sleepers During The Covid 19 Pandemic (HC 1075, published 2021-01-14)
• Investigation Into Preparations For Potential Covid 19 Vaccines (HC 1071, published 2020-12-16)
• Investigation Into Government Procurement During The Covid 19 Pandemic (HC 959, published 2020-11-26)
• The Supply Of Personal Protective Equipment Ppe During The Covid 19 Pandemic (HC 961, published 2020-11-25)
• The Uk Border Preparedness For The End Of The Transition Period (HC 371, published 2020-11-06)
• Readying The Nhs And Adult Social Care In England For Covid 19 (HC 367, published 2020-06-12)
• Overview Of The Uk Governments Response To The Covid 19 Pandemic (HC 366, published 2020-05-21)
• The Uk Border Preparedness For Eu Exit October 2019 (HC 98, published 2019-10-16)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Implemented Preparedness for online safety regulation: a) Ofcom should manage the public's expectations about the regime's impact and Ofcom's role during implementation to give confidence in the credibility of the new regime with the public, industry and others (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Preparedness for online safety regulation: b) Ofcom should develop its plans to inform industry about its requirements, particularly ensuring its data requests are coordinated and proportionate, and establishing how it will collect feedback, in particular from smaller, non-categorised companies (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Preparedness for online safety regulation: c) Ofcom should establish how it will manage the financial risks presented by the additional year of set-up and increased staffing need; as it does so, it should report transparently on its set-up costs through its normal reporting mechanisms, including its annual report and accounts (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Preparedness for online safety regulation: d) Ofcom should clarify its overall approach to long-term financial management, including the scope of its financial modelling and its assumptions about the future costs and funding of the regime. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Preparedness for online safety regulation: e) Ofcom should identify how it will reach the capability and capacity it needs and keep this relevant and up to date so that it is equipped to keep abreast of technology developments, the development of new online services and platforms, and changes to user behaviour as the regime is implemented and becomes operational. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Preparedness for online safety regulation: f) DSIT should work with Ofcom to identify how the data Ofcom plans to collect as part of its evaluation activities will support DSIT's own evaluation of the effectiveness of the regime and the achievement of its policy objectives. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Preparedness for online safety regulation: g) Ofcom should ensure that its processes for collecting data from service providers and its generation of automated information about these are providing it with data of sufficient quality to inform its regulatory duties and enable it to adapt its approach if the data show it is not achieving its aims (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented COVID-19 business grant schemes: HMT and DBT, working with local authorities, should by December 2023 draw up contingency plans to cover the provision of financial support to priority groups in the event of a future national emergency. The plans should draw upon the considerable experience gained by the departments and local authorities during the pandemic. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented COVID-19 business grant schemes: The plans should include: the responsibilities for assessing the level of economic risk, identifying potential solutions and taking action; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented COVID-19 business grant schemes: The plans should include: the data sources and analysis that might be needed at speed to assess the risk, determine how support might be targeted and the quantum of support needed; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented COVID-19 business grant schemes: The plans should include: the mechanisms for drawing upon local authority and departmental delivery expertise early in the design of the emergency support; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented COVID-19 business grant schemes: The plans should include: the mechanisms for considering the trade-offs that may need to be made between targeting support and introducing administrative complexity; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented COVID-19 business grant schemes: The plans should include: the options available for maintaining adequate control over the disbursement of public money ' reducing the risk of error and fraud as far as practicable ' whilst acting at pace; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented COVID-19 business grant schemes: The plans should include: consideration of what post-payment assurance processes may be needed and what can be done to streamline this; and (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented COVID-19 business grant schemes: HMT should, by September 2023, commission work to consider the impact of, and benefit secured from, the range of support to business provided through the COVID-19 pandemic to inform the development of future initiatives. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented COVID-19 business grant schemes: The plans should include: an assessment of the level of resources required to introduce and then manage future schemes when drawing on these lessons. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented COVID-19 business grant schemes: The plans should include: the type of leadership, capabilities and governance arrangements that need to be in place as the emergency response evolves (Status: Implemented)

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 88 historical audits (Rank: 2) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Good practice: risk appetite, procurement practice, requirement specification, lessons-learned, VFM assessment
• Scope limitations: Not evaluation of individual project or programme
• House of Commons Library briefing: Procurement statistics: a short guide
• Public Accounts Committee status: No inquiry opened yet (Pending NAO publication)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public expenditure
• Estimated value: £14bn estimated annual spend on digital programmes and technology. Note: total annual procurement spend of £393bn.
• Source: NAO: Government approach to technology suppliers, Efficiency in government procurement of common goods and services

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• Bank of England' Real-Time Gross Settlement System Renewal Programme (HC 1546, published 2025-12-12)
• National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme (HC 1379, published 2025-11-14)
• The UK's F-35 capability (HC 989, published 2025-07-11)
• Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges (HC HC543, published 2025-01-16)
• Efficiency in government procurement of common goods and services (HC 116, published 2024-07-23)

• Investigation into the Pensions Dashboards Programme (HC 732, published 2024-05-10)
• Use of artificial intelligence in government (HC 612, published 2024-03-15)
• Improving Value For Money In Non Competitive Procurement Of Defence Equipment (HC 412, published 2017-10-25)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: Set out clearly the governance structure required to deliver the Programme. As part of this, NS&I should update and communicate its terms of references for all boards to clarify which decisions are made by which board. NS&I should also work to embed its new risk management framework in the operations of its teams and projects. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: (NS&I should) Develop a realistic plan for completing the Programme. This should contain: - a clear statement of the Programme scope, what it is trying to achieve, and how it will become business as usual; - a detailed end-to-end design that helps NS&I to resolve its solution gaps; - robust scenario and contingency planning to reflect any further challenges that may arise and potential cost and timetable overruns; and - revised estimates of the benefits of the Programme and when these will be achieved, including the detailed criteria NS&I will use to judge whether the programme has been successful. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: (NS&I should) Enhance and implement its overall approach to contract management of its suppliers. It should clearly link this approach to its management of risks relating to interactions with suppliers, and to skills planning to ensure it has suitable experienced people in place to manage contracts effectively. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: (NS&I should) Ensure it has sufficient resource to re-procure the 'new' supplier contracts. It should also prepare for the Atos contract's expiry in March 2028. This preparation work should form part of the wider commercial strategy. As part of this process, NS&I should undertake a 'lessons learned' exercise drawing experiences from competitions it has run to date. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: (NS&I should) Decide on a clear and collaborative approach to engagement with user departments on the future of its business-to-business services. NS&I should play a leading role in co-ordinating a cross-government plan to ensure that an NS&I exit from these services would not disrupt scheme delivery. This can be undertaken as part of a refresh of its wider stakeholder engagement strategy and plans. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: (NS&I should) Develop a comprehensive plan for the skills and workforce needed to deliver the Programme and continue to run its existing services in the short, medium and long term. This should include consideration of the balance between in house and external capability. It should also review its longer-term plans for systems integration before its current contract with Capgemini ends. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: (NS&I should) Set out clearly the governance structure required to deliver the Programme. As part of this, NS&I should update and communicate its terms of references for all boards to clarify which decisions are made by which board. NS&I should also work to embed its new risk management framework in the operations of its teams and projects. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: (NS&I should) Review the information and data it uses to understand, monitor and report progress, costs and risks associated with the Programme. This should include a stronger, more proactive role for NS&I's Finance function within the Programme governance structure and activities, and actions to strengthen the quality and consistency across NS&I of financial information prepared and reported. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: (NS&I should) Introduce a systematic process for collating, categorising and monitoring progress against all recommendations from external reviews. It should use this to help it identify lessons for the rest of the Programme. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: HM Treasury should: ensure it sets out clearly its expectations of the role of NS&I's Board and its own role, in providing oversight of a complex programme of this nature. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding The UK's F-35 capability: The MoD should develop, maintain and update an assessment of the value it intends to deliver throughout the life of the programme. This should include a clear weighting of all military and non-military benefits over the short, medium and long-term, for example in a balanced scorecard, to give decision-makers a fuller understanding of the programme's value and support to informed choices about trade-offs. (Acceptance: Under consideration, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The UK's F-35 capability: In support of this assessment, and to enable full accountability, the MoD should calculate the following costs, including all relevant Defence Lines of Development and operational costs, including: costs to date, including all sunk costs; 10-year forecast costs which take a prudent view on programme issues and plans which could materially affect costs; and building on its recent whole-life cost calculation to 2069, including adapting for different scenarios depending on the number and variant of equipment type ordered, and adding in other relevant Defence Lines of Development and operational costs. (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The UK's F-35 capability: As part of its wider plans for reform, the MoD should consider what structural changes it can make to support more effective F-35 programme delivery, including: - extending the length of Senior Responsible Owner (SRO) and other senior programme staff tenures; (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The UK's F-35 capability: As part of its wider plans for reform, the MoD should consider what structural changes it can make to support more effective F-35 programme delivery, including: - providing appropriate financial and commercial freedoms including increasing delegations; (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The UK's F-35 capability: As part of its wider plans for reform, the MoD should consider what structural changes it can make to support more effective F-35 programme delivery, including: simplifying lines of accountability so that, where appropriate, relevant Defence Lines of Development report more formally to the programme's SRO; (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The UK's F-35 capability: As part of its wider plans for reform, the MoD should consider what structural changes it can make to support more effective F-35 programme delivery, including: streamlining approvals regimes. In particular, the MoD should ensure that F-35 investment requests receive scrutiny based on the value of the specific request being made rather than the value of the total F-35 programme, thereby encouraging a proportionate scrutiny approach to lower value requests within the programme. (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The UK's F-35 capability: The MoD should tighten its measurement of the capability of the F-35, relating it to an objective measure based on the high-level characteristics and key user requirements derived from the Secretary of State's policy baseline relating to F-35. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges: In view of government's decision to locate responsibility for the digital centre in DSIT, to provide effective leadership for government's digital commercial activities, the digital centre, GCF and CCS should consider who should take responsibility for addressing the issues in this report and the recommendations below: a) decide who should take ownership of the strategic relationship with suppliers and responsibility for collecting and analysing data about government's overall digital commercial activities, ensuring clarity on what is done centrally to gather demand and supply data, assessing the demand pipeline against supplier capacity and evaluating what that means for government's use of suppliers; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges: b) produce a sourcing strategy including how government is better able to maximise its ability to negotiate with 'big tech' and strategic suppliers; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges: e) address recruitment shortfalls and develop a plan to better equip and train decision-makers with responsibility for initiating digital commercial and contracting. This should include education on legacy data and systems, the importance of understanding the business requirement at a sufficient level of detail, and the risks of 'build before buy' and of opting for unproven technology. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges: c) identify what actions it needs to take to secure improvement in governance, processes, guidelines and supplier engagement, to ensure that contracts for different categories of digital activities reflect a planned approach that addresses the business problem to be solved; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges: d) work with departments to identify what further negotiation levers they would find useful beyond headline volume and pricing agreements. This should include guidance for contracts for digital procurement setting out how best to navigate options and negotiate on aspects such as payment terms and flexibility to ensure that departments are not paying more than necessary; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges: Individual departments and public bodies should: f) ensure that CDIOs are responsible for overseeing commercial contracting involving technology suppliers, supported by their own departmental digital commercial teams. Large digital change programmes should not have business cases approved and contracts agreed without digital experts agreeing that requirements have been properly understood and articulated and are deliverable; (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges: g) strengthen their intelligent client function for digital change to identify and develop key requirements before tenders and bid processes commence, improve how policymakers and technical specialists work together with procurement specialists, and ensure that digital specialists take the lead on technical supplier engagement; (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges: h) set up the capability needed to improve data and processes to inform decision-making, including a pipeline of supply and demand to help the centre of government in building a more strategic approach to suppliers. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 57 historical audits (Rank: 6) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Describe the current landscape, highlight lessons from previous UK initiatives, and draw on international examples
• Scope limitations: No assessment of individual programme performance. Not evaluation of privacy or ethical considerations
• House of Commons Library briefing: How can people prove their identity?
• Public Accounts Committee status: Inquiry opened [3 July 2026](https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8849/digital-id/)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public expenditure
• Estimated value: £1.8bn investment over 3 years (£0.6bn per year)
• Source: OBR Economic and Fiscal Outlook, November 2025

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• Electronic monitoring: improving resilience to meet increasing demand (HC 266, published 2026-07-10)
• National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme (HC 1379, published 2025-11-14)
• Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges (HC HC543, published 2025-01-16)
• Efficiency in government procurement of common goods and services (HC 116, published 2024-07-23)
• Investigation into the Pensions Dashboards Programme (HC 732, published 2024-05-10)

• Use of artificial intelligence in government (HC 612, published 2024-03-15)
• Investigation Into Verify (HC 1926, published 2019-03-05)
• E Borders And Successor Programmes (HC 608, published 2015-12-07)
• Universal Credit Progress Update (HC 786, published 2014-11-26)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: Set out clearly the governance structure required to deliver the Programme. As part of this, NS&I should update and communicate its terms of references for all boards to clarify which decisions are made by which board. NS&I should also work to embed its new risk management framework in the operations of its teams and projects. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: (NS&I should) Develop a realistic plan for completing the Programme. This should contain: - a clear statement of the Programme scope, what it is trying to achieve, and how it will become business as usual; - a detailed end-to-end design that helps NS&I to resolve its solution gaps; - robust scenario and contingency planning to reflect any further challenges that may arise and potential cost and timetable overruns; and - revised estimates of the benefits of the Programme and when these will be achieved, including the detailed criteria NS&I will use to judge whether the programme has been successful. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: (NS&I should) Enhance and implement its overall approach to contract management of its suppliers. It should clearly link this approach to its management of risks relating to interactions with suppliers, and to skills planning to ensure it has suitable experienced people in place to manage contracts effectively. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: (NS&I should) Ensure it has sufficient resource to re-procure the 'new' supplier contracts. It should also prepare for the Atos contract's expiry in March 2028. This preparation work should form part of the wider commercial strategy. As part of this process, NS&I should undertake a 'lessons learned' exercise drawing experiences from competitions it has run to date. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: (NS&I should) Decide on a clear and collaborative approach to engagement with user departments on the future of its business-to-business services. NS&I should play a leading role in co-ordinating a cross-government plan to ensure that an NS&I exit from these services would not disrupt scheme delivery. This can be undertaken as part of a refresh of its wider stakeholder engagement strategy and plans. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: (NS&I should) Develop a comprehensive plan for the skills and workforce needed to deliver the Programme and continue to run its existing services in the short, medium and long term. This should include consideration of the balance between in house and external capability. It should also review its longer-term plans for systems integration before its current contract with Capgemini ends. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: (NS&I should) Set out clearly the governance structure required to deliver the Programme. As part of this, NS&I should update and communicate its terms of references for all boards to clarify which decisions are made by which board. NS&I should also work to embed its new risk management framework in the operations of its teams and projects. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: (NS&I should) Review the information and data it uses to understand, monitor and report progress, costs and risks associated with the Programme. This should include a stronger, more proactive role for NS&I's Finance function within the Programme governance structure and activities, and actions to strengthen the quality and consistency across NS&I of financial information prepared and reported. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: (NS&I should) Introduce a systematic process for collating, categorising and monitoring progress against all recommendations from external reviews. It should use this to help it identify lessons for the rest of the Programme. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding National Savings & Investments' Business Transformation Programme: HM Treasury should: ensure it sets out clearly its expectations of the role of NS&I's Board and its own role, in providing oversight of a complex programme of this nature. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges: In view of government's decision to locate responsibility for the digital centre in DSIT, to provide effective leadership for government's digital commercial activities, the digital centre, GCF and CCS should consider who should take responsibility for addressing the issues in this report and the recommendations below: a) decide who should take ownership of the strategic relationship with suppliers and responsibility for collecting and analysing data about government's overall digital commercial activities, ensuring clarity on what is done centrally to gather demand and supply data, assessing the demand pipeline against supplier capacity and evaluating what that means for government's use of suppliers; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges: b) produce a sourcing strategy including how government is better able to maximise its ability to negotiate with 'big tech' and strategic suppliers; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges: e) address recruitment shortfalls and develop a plan to better equip and train decision-makers with responsibility for initiating digital commercial and contracting. This should include education on legacy data and systems, the importance of understanding the business requirement at a sufficient level of detail, and the risks of 'build before buy' and of opting for unproven technology. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges: c) identify what actions it needs to take to secure improvement in governance, processes, guidelines and supplier engagement, to ensure that contracts for different categories of digital activities reflect a planned approach that addresses the business problem to be solved; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges: d) work with departments to identify what further negotiation levers they would find useful beyond headline volume and pricing agreements. This should include guidance for contracts for digital procurement setting out how best to navigate options and negotiate on aspects such as payment terms and flexibility to ensure that departments are not paying more than necessary; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges: Individual departments and public bodies should: f) ensure that CDIOs are responsible for overseeing commercial contracting involving technology suppliers, supported by their own departmental digital commercial teams. Large digital change programmes should not have business cases approved and contracts agreed without digital experts agreeing that requirements have been properly understood and articulated and are deliverable; (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges: g) strengthen their intelligent client function for digital change to identify and develop key requirements before tenders and bid processes commence, improve how policymakers and technical specialists work together with procurement specialists, and ensure that digital specialists take the lead on technical supplier engagement; (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Government's approach to technology suppliers: addressing the challenges: h) set up the capability needed to improve data and processes to inform decision-making, including a pipeline of supply and demand to help the centre of government in building a more strategic approach to suppliers. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 35 historical audits (Rank: 13) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Department arrangements: understanding of supply chain risk, actions to prevent and mitigate, sector preparedness
• Scope limitations: Long term resilience of domestic food production
• House of Commons Library briefing: Food security
• Public Accounts Committee status: Inquiry opened [3 July 2026](https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8854/resilience-of-the-uks-food-supply-to-disruptions/)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Household spending
• Estimated value: Households spend around £172bn per year on food and non-alcoholic drink
• Source: DEFRA Family Food statistics, FYE 2024, based on a £47.19 per week annual spend, multiplined by population of ~70 million

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• Resilience to animal diseases (HC 946, published 2025-06-04)
• The Farming and Countryside Programme (HC 123, published 2024-07-23)
• Resilience to flooding (HC 189, published 2023-11-15)
• Improving The Uks Science Capability For Managing Animal Diseases (HC 64, published 2022-06-15)
• Investigation Into The Free School Meals Voucher Scheme (HC 881, published 2020-12-02)

• Managing Flood Risk (HC 962, published 2020-11-27)
• Early Review Of The New Farming Programme (HC 2221, published 2019-06-05)
• Strategic Flood Risk Management (HC 780, published 2014-11-05)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding Resilience to flooding: Defra and EA together should, as part of planning for the next capital programme: c consider how they expect the profile of projects to change in size and nature and implement any partnership funding policy, rule or process changes that may be needed well in advance of the next capital programme (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Resilience to flooding: e assess how well the geographical distribution of investment reflects needs at a local level and publish their findings by the end of 2024 together with proposals to mitigate any funding inequalities that this may identify (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Resilience to flooding: h in the next 12 months, develop a plan of work to investigate the reasons for the increased inaccuracy and uncertainty in its business case forecasts and, based on the findings, put in place remedial actions (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Resilience to flooding: i ensure that the Delivery Portfolio Improvement Plan delivers against its data and systems objectives by April 2024 to ensure the data EA collects and uses are complete, consistent and accurate, and provides the transparency needed by senior officials and ministers to fully understand the risks to progress. EA should review the position in April 2025 to ensure these objectives have been met and that data are of the required quality. In addition, EA should continue to improve its existing asset data in the AIMS:OM system with a target completion date of March 2025. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Managing Flood Risk: EA should: g) update and improve its methodology for calculating the risk reduction achieved from its investment programme and, for each year of the new programme, report publicly on annual progress towards reducing risk by 11%; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: No longer relevant)
• Outstanding Early Review Of The New Farming Programme: Defra should: a) get in place a plan with realistic timescales, that is based on a full understanding of interdependencies, and that has sufficient flexibility to allow changes to be made as more is learned about how farmers react to the new framework; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: No longer relevant)
• Implemented Resilience to flooding: Defra, EA and HM Treasury should: a work together to ensure that decisions on the current reprofiling of the capital programme are not influenced by short-term funding periods and targets and are focused on maximising long-term value for money (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Resilience to flooding: by April 2024, explore how to ensure there is the necessary flexibility to easily switch money from the capital programme into the asset maintenance budget where it is value for money, and ensure the decision-making process is streamlined to enable timely decisions to be made. Defra and EA should undertake a timely assessment of the value for money of such options going forward to inform this decision-making process. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Resilience to flooding: d take realistic account of staff resource constraints when setting out the objectives, scope and ambition of the next capital programme and the impacts on whole-life asset management (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Resilience to flooding: f engage over the next year with the private sector at a national and local level to publicise the benefits the private sector derives from the capital programme and encourage increased private sector financial contribution to the capital programme to reflect these benefits. Defra should also set a target for private sector partnership funding contributions for the next capital programme. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Resilience to flooding: EA should: g before planning starts for the next capital programme, develop a set of key long-term milestones and dates which chart the course towards becoming a nation resilient to flooding by 2100. This should look to cover a timetable comparable with the long-term investment scenarios 50-year view of flood risk and investment, and which goes beyond the six-yearly roadmap planning. It should include an integrated assessment of maintenance and capital spend to secure value for money (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Flood Risk: Defra should: a) before the start of the new investment period (April 2021), provide a clearer sense of direction to all the bodies involved on what government aims to achieve, and what the measures of success will be; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Flood Risk: b) work with the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government and HM Treasury to develop a clear understanding of whether flood risk management funding for local authorities is adequate to cover the level of flood risk individual authorities face, and report on this each year starting from 2021-22; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Flood Risk: c) by April 2021, review its oversight of the programme to ensure it is making the most of existing opportunities to appropriately challenge EA’s approach, performance and investment decisions and that it has its own assessment of programme risks; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Flood Risk: d) ensure, when developing its national set of indicators to track progress, that the indicators are clearly linked to the actions set out in its policy statement and that, where possible, its policy statement actions are measurable and time-limited; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Flood Risk: e) work with EA to understand what is driving the profile of investment in deprived areas and whether there are any underlying structural issues behind the decline in investment since 2014; and (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Flood Risk: f) work with EA and HM Treasury to ensure funding cycles do not have an adverse impact on EA’s ability to manage their investment programme and optimise value for money. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Flood Risk: h) as part of its annual reporting, report on the geographical distribution of investment, including the impact of changes to the partnership funding model and the amount of investment directed to deprived areas, to provide evidence to Defra to help inform policy decisions and government priorities; and (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing Flood Risk: i) by April 2021, review and update the current approach to communicating with third-party asset owners, develop supporting tools and a communication plan for EA’s local area teams to work with third-party asset owners to ensure asset owners are aware of the condition of their assets and of the need for maintenance where required. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Early Review Of The New Farming Programme: b) ensure that its decisions on which outcomes the government wishes to prioritise, and the associated payment mechanisms, are taken in good time for the pilot starting in 2021, so it has a solid basis for preparing the digital infrastructure and farmers have enough time to adapt their businesses and develop their plans; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Early Review Of The New Farming Programme: c) extend participation in the tests and trials to include a wider range of farmers and other land managers, to test the willingness and ability of individual farmers to participate in ELMS and so provide more confidence that a reasonable level of take-up will be achieved; and (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Early Review Of The New Farming Programme: d) determine the level of ELMS take-up it needs to justify its investment in the design and development of ELMS and consider what alternative arrangements are needed if this is not achieved. (Status: Implemented)

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 21 historical audits (Rank: 15) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Department arrangements: framework, governance and related public bodies to assess impact of policy on current and future bills
• Scope limitations: Energy system and programmes
• House of Commons Library briefing: Domestic energy prices: In short
• Public Accounts Committee status: No inquiry opened yet (Pending NAO publication)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public expenditure
• Estimated value: £44bn energy bills support programme (2022-24). Note: households and businesses are the bill payers. This source refers only to a support programme
• Source: NAO: Energy bills support: an update

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• Sizewell C (HC 33, published 2026-05-20)
• Energy bills support: an update (HC 232, published 2024-11-14)
• Investigation into Bulb Energy (HC 1202, published 2023-03-29)
• Energy bills support (HC HC232, published 2023-02-07)
• The Energy Supplier Market (HC 68, published 2022-06-22)

• Regulating To Protect Consumers In Utilities Communications And Financial Service Markets (HC 1992, published 2019-03-20)
• Hinkley Point C (HC 40, published 2017-06-23)
• Vulnerable Consumers In Regulated Industries (HC 1061, published 2017-03-31)
• Controlling The Consumer Funded Costs Of Energy Policies The Levy Control Framework (HC 725, published 2016-10-18)
• Investigation Into The Department Of Energy And Climate Changes Loans To The Green Deal Finance Company (HC 888, published 2016-04-14)
• Green Deal And Energy Company Obligation (HC 607, published 2016-04-14)
• Early Contracts For Renewable Electricity1 (HC 172, published 2014-06-27)
• Infrastructure investment: the impact on consumer bills (HC 812, published 2013-11-13)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding Energy bills support: an update: DESNZ should work with Ofgem to consider what impact the increasing levels of consumer debt could have on the resilience of the energy market to price spikes and what actions should be taken to reduce debt levels over time. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding The Energy Supplier Market: Ofgem should: e) define and agree a set of a set of objectives for its regulation of the retail market against which it should review and report its performance at least annually. This should be a balanced set of measures based on available qualitative and quantitative information relating to consumer outcomes on issues such as price; quality of service; stability and predictability of tariffs; and delivery of the innovation needed to achieve net zero. This should include input from all the parts of Ofgem that interact with the retail market; (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Implemented Energy bills support: an update: DESNZ should consider how it might use its understanding of the uncertainty around, for example, wholesale energy prices and changes in demand to improve its assessment of the costs of future interventions. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Energy bills support: an update: Based on a consideration of the likelihood and size of energy price fluctuations in the future, DESNZ should identify what interventions might be necessary across a reasonable set of scenarios to mitigate the impact of these fluctuations. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Energy bills support: an update: DESNZ should review its approach to preventing fraud and error on the schemes to identify good practice and any areas for improvement to share with other parts of government. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Energy bills support: an update: DESNZ should use the insights it has gained through implementing the non-domestic energy schemes and ensure that these are incorporated into future policy design. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Energy Supplier Market: The Department and Ofgem together should: a) in line with plans to revisit the Energy Retail Market Strategy, set a date by which they will review the changes needed to retail market regulation so that the supplier retail market aligns with the achievement of net zero. They should also establish interim milestones, including establishing by the end of 2022 high-level principles around the role suppliers will play in achieving net zero with which to test whether any short-term financial regulations are compatible with these principles; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Energy Supplier Market: c) undertake a review of the costs and benefits of the price cap to inform decisions about the operation of the cap and alternative forms of price protection. This should include consideration of whether alternative types of price cap, such as one that focuses on vulnerable households or is based on the relative cost of different tariffs a supplier offers, better achieves its objectives for the retail market; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Energy Supplier Market: b) establish a process by the end of 2022 for considering how new interventions in the retail market, like the price cap, would react in a wide range of scenarios, to mitigate the risk that interventions implemented at pace do not sufficiently consider the risks and unintended impacts; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Energy Supplier Market: d) review and update the SOLR process in response to issues which have emerged over the last year. This includes issues that arose in its implementation, such as uncertainty over credit balances caused by delays in the transfer of customer information, and addressing the imbalance of risk between suppliers and consumers, which currently enables suppliers to exit from the market with little risk and even potentially to make a financial return. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Energy Supplier Market: f) build regular review points into its current round of changes to the regulation of suppliers, including the new financial responsibility principles, for it to consider whether its approach continues to support its range of objectives, including the achievement of net zero and ensuring consumers do not overpay for energy. This should include consideration of whether it is continuing to balance adequately the need for financial resilience and enabling innovative business models to enter the market; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented The Energy Supplier Market: g) as part of its regular reviews, consider whether it is able to monitor adequately compliance with its new rules around financial responsibility. This should include considering whether it has sufficient understanding of the business models that suppliers use. It should also consider whether its powers and resources enable it to enforce the new rules and address any issues blocking its ability to take rapid and effective compliance and enforcement action against suppliers where necessary. (Status: Implemented)

Impacts tracker: NAO annual report

• GBP 443.254m financial impact recognized in FY 2025-26 from precedent 'Energy bills support: an update' (Fraud and error avoided in the Energy bills support schemes) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 443.254m financial impact recognized in FY 2025-26 from precedent 'Energy bills support' (Fraud and error avoided in the Energy bills support schemes) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 52 historical audits (Rank: 7) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Regulatory effectiveness: department objective, Office for Students monitoring and joint mitigation to minimise taxpayer exposure
• Scope limitations: Universities / HE institutions
• House of Commons Library briefing: Higher education finances and funding in England
• Public Accounts Committee status: No inquiry opened yet (Pending NAO publication)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public expenditure
• Estimated value: Total public expenditure on higher education in England, including direct funding, long-run cost of fee loans, plus long-run costs of maintenance loans and targeted support for students, was £10.3 billion in the 2023-24. Note: income generated by higher education in academic year 2023/24 in England was £44.6 billion. In 2023/24, 50 publicly funded universities in England (42% of the total number) had a financial deficit: their total expenditure was greater than their total income.
• Source: House of Commons Library, Higher education finances and funding in England (CBP-10037)

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• Investigation into student finance for study at franchised higher education providers (HC 387, published 2024-01-18)
• Regulating The Financial Sustainability Of Higher Education Providers In England (HC 1141, published 2022-03-09)
• The Higher Education Market (HC 629, published 2017-12-08)
• Follow Up On Alternative Higher Education Providers (HC 411, published 2017-10-18)
• Investigation Into Financial Support For Students At Alternative Higher Education Providers (HC 861, published 2014-12-02)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding Investigation into student finance for study at franchised higher education providers: take a systems-based approach to mapping out its, SLC's, and OfS's formal responsibilities for protecting student loan funding from the risk of fraud and abuse, making any legislative changes as required. As part of this, it should ensure responsibilities are agreed with respective parties, for example in a published memorandum, and ensure individual bodies have sufficient means to mitigate their respective risks to a tolerable level (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Investigation into student finance for study at franchised higher education providers: consider options to limit the amount of money at risk from fraudulently claimed maintenance loans by, for example, making monthly rather than termly payments as fraudulently claimed payments are difficult to claw back (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Regulating The Financial Sustainability Of Higher Education Providers In England: c) together with the OfS, assess how redistribution of student numbers between providers, as a result of higher A-level grades awarded in 2020 and 2021, has affected students’ experiences and providers’ finances, and draw on this to understand the likely consequences following release of A-level grades awarded in 2022. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: No longer relevant)
• Outstanding Regulating The Financial Sustainability Of Higher Education Providers In England: f) review, improve where necessary and then reauthorise student protection plans for all providers to ensure they remain adequate and can respond to new risks; and (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: No longer relevant)
• Implemented Investigation into student finance for study at franchised higher education providers: as a matter of urgency OfS and DfE should jointly reiterate to the higher education sector its role in preventing fraud and abuse, and particularly to lead providers that they bear direct responsibility for the governance and management practices of franchised providers. They should also consider the effectiveness of communications across the higher education sector to develop an ongoing engagement plan to help reinforce respective responsibilities. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Investigation into student finance for study at franchised higher education providers: establish a common anti-fraud and corruption culture and risk tolerance by, for example, encouraging the reporting of fraud and corruption and embedding discussions in risk management forums (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Investigation into student finance for study at franchised higher education providers: explicitly consider the inherent risks associated with using franchised providers, and the extent to which they represent value for money, setting out how it will manage these risks. This should include consideration of both its risk exposure across the higher education sector and the benefits franchised providers can generate by broadening higher education participation (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Investigation into student finance for study at franchised higher education providers: draw on relevant evidence, improving this where necessary, to decide on the best way to address weaknesses across the governance and regulatory framework. This should include consideration of whether all franchised providers should register with OfS, and whether to give OfS and SLC enhanced powers to intervene such as a power to review or audit franchise arrangements (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Investigation into student finance for study at franchised higher education providers: develop further guidance for providers explaining what constitutes meaningful student course engagement and how it expects providers to self-assure data. As part of this, DfE should consider what SLC and OfS need to better assess the quality of provider data, and what SLC needs to have sufficient assurance over student payments (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Investigation into student finance for study at franchised higher education providers: increase activity to raise awareness among lead providers of the risks and benefits associated with using franchised providers. This could include sharing good practice and setting out the consequences (including student loan funding being recovered or commercial damage) should concerns be identified after payment (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Investigation into student finance for study at franchised higher education providers: following DfE's ongoing review of higher education controls, in 2024 share with all higher education providers good practice and advice on how to ensure those signing-up for courses are not being mis-sold courses or loans, particularly where recruitment agents and incentive payments are used (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Investigation into student finance for study at franchised higher education providers: more systematically share data and testing results, such as from statistical testing to identify anomalies or targeted sampling of provider data audits, to better understand risks and focus investigative work (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Regulating The Financial Sustainability Of Higher Education Providers In England: The Department should: a) review, improve and agree with the OfS the key performance measures and other indicators it uses to hold the OfS to account, to include measures of the impact of the regulatory regime, rather than measures outside the OfS’s control; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Regulating The Financial Sustainability Of Higher Education Providers In England: b) make clear what tolerance the government has for provider failure, and the circumstances under which it would or would not intervene; and (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Regulating The Financial Sustainability Of Higher Education Providers In England: The OfS should: d) communicate more effectively with the sector to build trust in its approach as a regulator; improve providers’ understanding of its attitude to risk and how it defines risk-based, proportionate, regulation; and be more ready to share sector insights to improve efficiency and competitiveness in the sector; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Regulating The Financial Sustainability Of Higher Education Providers In England: e) set out how it will secure provider and stakeholder views of its work; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Regulating The Financial Sustainability Of Higher Education Providers In England: g) prioritise finalising its key performance indicator on how it assesses the value for money students see in their education and set out how its work will reverse students’ declining satisfaction rates. (Status: Implemented)

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 57 historical audits (Rank: 6) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Department arrangements: affordability, comparisons, relationship with reward structures
• Scope limitations: Four largest central government pay-as-you-go schemes: NHS, teachers, civil servants, armed forces. Not: state pension, LGPS, administration
• House of Commons Library briefing: Public service pension increases
• Public Accounts Committee status: No inquiry opened yet (Pending NAO publication)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Liability for future public expenditure
• Estimated value: £1.3 trillion net liability (most recent WGA)
• Source: Whole of Government Accounts. Unfunded long-term liability, on WGA, excluded from headline PSND

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• Pensions transferred to AEA Technology when it was privatised (HC 1169, published 2023-03-03)
• Public Service Pensions (HC 1242, published 2021-03-19)
• Evaluating The Government Balance Sheet Pensions (HC 238, published 2016-06-30)
• Spinning-out MyCSP as a mutual joint venture (HC 538, published 2013-09-12)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Implemented Public Service Pensions: HM Treasury should: a) develop plans to address the impact of the administrative challenge that its proposals in response to the McCloud judgment will have for employers and scheme administrators, so any changes can be implemented whilst maintaining a good level of service for members; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Public Service Pensions: b) resolve its concerns about the cost control mechanism and be open and transparent about the impact of any changes it makes for employers and scheme members; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Public Service Pensions: c) in conjunction with the Cabinet Office, work closely with employers to understand how public service pensions can best support their workforce planning, to ensure pensions are an effective tool in recruiting and retaining the staff they need; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Public Service Pensions: d) consider government’s overall approach to ensuring that employees understand their pensions, particularly for the three million scheme members affected by the McCloud judgment who will need reliable and timely information, including from scheme administrators, to make decisions about their retirement plans; and (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Public Service Pensions: e) consider whether broader performance measures, covering affordability and its other objectives, would give it greater assurance that it is delivering its objectives for public service pensions. For example, it could collect and analyse information regularly on the rate at which some groups are opting out of schemes. (Status: Implemented)

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 7 historical audits (Rank: 20) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Department arrangements: objective setting, effectiveness of working with private sector, department and Ofcom management of network security and resilience
• Scope limitations: Individual network operators
• House of Commons Library briefing: Building broadband and mobile infrastructure
• Public Accounts Committee status: No inquiry opened yet (Pending NAO publication)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public expenditure
• Estimated value: Capital spend: £268.8m in 2024-25. £2bn contract value at March 2025
• Source: Building Digital Uk Annual Report and Accounts 2024-25

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• Regulating water, energy and broadband to protect consumers in vulnerable circumstances (HC 27, published 2026-06-10)
• Supporting mobile connectivity (HC 555, published 2024-02-22)
• Improving Broadband (HC 863, published 2020-10-16)
• Regulating To Protect Consumers In Utilities Communications And Financial Service Markets (HC 1992, published 2019-03-20)
• Upgrading Emergency Service Communications The Emergency Services Network (HC 627, published 2016-09-15)

• The Superfast Rural Broadband Programme Update (NA26, published 2013-07-05)
• The rural broadband programme (HC 535, published 2013-07-05)
• Digital Britain 2: putting users at the heart of government's digital business (HC 1048, published 2013-03-28)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding Supporting mobile connectivity: DSIT and BDUK should ensure that there is sufficient focus on delivering the 4G performance that consumers and businesses need. They should...continue to work with Ofcom to improve processes for measuring coverage to ensure that 4G coverage data reliably reflect user experience, particularly in those remote areas covered by the SRN where Ofcom has carried out limited testing (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Supporting mobile connectivity: DSIT and BDUK should ensure that there is sufficient focus on delivering the 4G performance that consumers and businesses need. They should...monitor how consumers and businesses are using 4G in SRN areas to ensure that intended benefits are being realised, and use this information to inform plans for supporting future connectivity (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Supporting mobile connectivity: As it develops the wireless infrastructure strategy, DSIT should...set out target dates for taking key decisions about the outcomes it is seeking, the connectivity that will be needed to realise them, and the input DSIT will need from other government bodies to deliver opportunities to use 5G in key sectors; (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Supporting mobile connectivity: As it develops the wireless infrastructure strategy, DSIT should...determine the combination of enablers that will be required to deliver this connectivity (for example, 4G, wired connectivity, standalone 5G, other new technologies) and where they will need to be deployed to meet users' needs; (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Supporting mobile connectivity: As it develops the wireless infrastructure strategy, DSIT should...collect the data needed to assess to what extent the market will meet the UK's future connectivity needs, and the government funding that may be required (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Supporting mobile connectivity: As it develops the wireless infrastructure strategy, DSIT should...learn lessons from its experience on previous digital infrastructure programmes, including the risk that advances in technology coupled with the practical and commercial barriers to deploying infrastructure in remote areas could perpetuate the rural urban divide (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Implemented Supporting mobile connectivity: DSIT and BDUK should ensure that their arrangements for oversight of MNOs on the SRN programme enable effective decision-making. BDUK should ensure that it receives timely and detailed financial and performance data across the programme to allow it to monitor progress, have clear sight of reliable forecasts, assess delivery risks, and obtain assurance about the likely outturn costs. DSIT and BDUK should consider whether any further changes to the grant agreement are required to facilitate information sharing, and whether additional financial reviews are needed to understand and verify the reasons for any increases in the cost of the programme. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Supporting mobile connectivity: DSIT and BDUK should ensure that there is sufficient focus on delivering the 4G performance that consumers and businesses need. They should: carry out a detailed analysis of the outcomes they are seeking to achieve from improving connectivity in remote areas and who will benefit, and use this analysis to determine the level of service required (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Supporting mobile connectivity: DSIT and BDUK should ensure that there is sufficient focus on delivering the 4G performance that consumers and businesses need. They should...assess how any actions they take to address the affordability of the SRN programme affect outcomes for consumers. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving Broadband: The Department should, in respect of both the Superfast and Future Programmes: a) work with suppliers and Ofcom to address customer issues with broadband and encourage take-up, to help realise the benefits from widespread broadband envisaged in its Superfast Programme’s business case and to ensure the Future Programme also achieves the benefits of gigabit-capable technology; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving Broadband: b) set out how it will ensure better outcomes for consumers, including any relevant learning from similar programmes, so that they have both choice and the ability to switch providers; and (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving Broadband: c) set out how it intends to measure the benefits of its investment, including setting programme-specific objectives as clear measures of success for its Future Programme. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving Broadband: In respect of the Future Programme, it should: d) set out how it intends to improve its data, including how it will: • secure the required quality of data for identifying which areas and premises it intends to subsidise; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving Broadband: • replicate local body knowledge and systems; and (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving Broadband: • encourage suppliers to set out their plans; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving Broadband: e) set out how it will retain local body expertise in a centralised procurement model, including how it will mitigate the risk of financial pressures on local government leading to broadband teams being disbanded; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving Broadband: f) present a detailed plan and schedule, reflecting on learning from the recent pandemic to pinpoint gaps in current broadband provision, identifying: • how it will meet the proposed timeline together with additional costs and benefits of accelerating the programme; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving Broadband: • the key risks to delivery, costs and outcomes and its proposed mitigation approaches; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving Broadband: • the extent to which it intends to follow an “outside-in” approach; (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving Broadband: • those local areas which will still not be covered by the final 20% of the Future Programme and any mitigations to ensure that these areas are not left behind; and (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving Broadband: • how and when it intends to review and update these plans to ensure transparency about what it considers to be deliverable and by when. (Status: Implemented)

Impacts tracker: NAO annual report

• GBP 25.671m financial impact recognized in FY 2025-26 from precedent 'Improving Broadband' (Increased uptake of social broadband tariffs) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 23.455m financial impact recognized in FY 2024-25 from precedent 'Improving Broadband' (Increased uptake of social broadband tariffs) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]
• GBP 7.600m financial impact recognized in FY 2023-24 from precedent 'Improving Broadband' (Increased uptake of social broadband tariffs) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 104 historical audits (Rank: 1) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Department arrangements: integration of patient data, benefits realistion from investment, communication of benefits. Federated Data Platform, NHS app, Single Patient Record
• House of Commons Library briefing: Patient health records: Access, sharing and confidentiality
• Public Accounts Committee status: No inquiry opened yet (Pending NAO publication)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public expenditure
• Estimated value: £0.33bn contract value
• Source: NHS England FDP contract explainer. https://www.england.nhs.uk/digitaltechnology/nhs-federated-data-platform/security-privacy/contract-explainer/

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• Primary and community healthcare support for people living with frailty (HC 1518, published 2025-12-05)
• NHS England's management of elective care transformation programmes (HC 766, published 2025-03-24)
• Nhs Financial Management And Sustainability (HC 124, published 2024-07-23)
• NHS financial management and sustainability 2024 (HC 590, published 2024-07-23)
• Managing NHS backlogs and waiting times in England (HC 799, published 2022-11-17)

• Digital Transformation In The Nhs (HC 317, published 2020-05-15)
• Improving Patient Access General Practice (HC 913, published 2017-01-11)
• Discharging Older Patients From Hospital (HC 18, published 2016-05-26)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding Primary and community healthcare support for people living with frailty: GPs are not providing the level of support that people living with frailty need. To improve this, NHSE should set clear and consistent requirements for GPs to assess and support people living with frailty, including the proportion and frequency of assessments and the minimum acceptable care to be provided. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Primary and community healthcare support for people living with frailty: NHSE needs to put in place systematic follow-up for unexplained variations in performance against requirements it has set in the GP contract. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Primary and community healthcare support for people living with frailty: NHSE should set out a timetable for its work to standardise community health services and details on how community health services will align with and support the move to neighbourhood health services. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Primary and community healthcare support for people living with frailty: NHSE should assess the added value of collating and quality assuring consistent data from general practices on the numbers of frailty assessments conducted and the support provided as a result. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Primary and community healthcare support for people living with frailty: NHSE needs to establish a direct measure of how well the NHS maintains the independence of the population rather than relying on measures that focus on the perceived burden on the NHS and on hospitals, in particular. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Primary and community healthcare support for people living with frailty: There are many piecemeal initiatives for frailty but no real understanding of the impact they make on people's health. DHSC should commission a systematic evaluation to demonstrate whether its patchwork of frailty initiatives is working together to provide an effective and holistic approach to supporting people living with frailty. This should include urgent community response, the enhanced Health in Care Homes programme, virtual wards, community health services and neighbourhood health. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Primary and community healthcare support for people living with frailty: To help bring about integration, DHSC and NHSE should create more effective mechanisms to enable service level funding to flow from acute care to community health services. (Acceptance: N/A, Status: N/A)
• Outstanding Nhs Financial Management And Sustainability: The Department and NHSE&I should develop a coherent long-term capital strategy, based on a long-term capital settlement, to support the development of The NHS Long Term Plan. This should include establishing a transparent, simplified, needs-based mechanism for prioritising, accessing and spending capital that better addresses high- and significant-risk backlog maintenance and supports place-based reform. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Implemented Nhs Financial Management And Sustainability: The Department and NHSE&I should redesign the financial architecture to promote the behaviours that will be needed to achieve The NHS Long Term Plan. It should draw on the lessons from previous schemes which have not worked, such as the use of punitively high interest-bearing loans to deter trusts from overspending. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Nhs Financial Management And Sustainability: As part of these wider financial reforms to establish a more stable funding system, the Department should put in place an alternative support system to provide assistance to the most financially distressed organisations, stop issuing loans where there is no realistic prospect of those loans being repaid, and restructure the balance sheets of these trusts to address the accumulated debt that will not be repaid. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Nhs Financial Management And Sustainability: The Department and NHSE&I should develop a better understanding of how much of the deficits in trusts in severe financial difficulties are down to structural issues that cannot be addressed by local health systems and develop a plan to address these structural issues and include this in any changes to payment systems. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Nhs Financial Management And Sustainability: NHSE&I should put in place a regulatory and oversight system that aligns with the responsibilities placed upon individual NHS bodies and their role within non-statutory sustainability and transformation partnerships and integrated care systems. This should clearly set out how roles and responsibilities sit between the national NHSE&I team, regional NHSE&I teams and local partnerships. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing NHS backlogs and waiting times in England: a) NHSE should improve its reporting indicators so it has a full set in place by the start of April 2023 at the latest. It should develop new indicators to take account of key risks (such as worsening health inequalities or health outcomes) and critical enablers within individual programmes (for instance, workforce availability, which is crucial to several initiatives). (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing NHS backlogs and waiting times in England: b) Before April 2021, DHSC and NHSE should agree and publish guidance that explains clearly and fully how they define and report high-level metrics for increasing NHS activity and reducing long waits to ensure that they are transparent and consistently applied. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing NHS backlogs and waiting times in England: c) Before April 2023, NHSE should set up independent evaluations of its major elective recovery programmes so that it is actively developing the evidence base for these initiatives. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing NHS backlogs and waiting times in England: d) In Quarter 1 of 2023-24 NHSE should review the elective and cancer recovery actions it took in 2022-23, to assess progress and any unintended effects. At the same time, DHSC and NHSE should determine whether elective recovery targets and trajectories need to be adjusted, and how to allocate recovery funding, for future years based on actual performance in 2022-23. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing NHS backlogs and waiting times in England: e) During 2022-23, NHSE should publish a report to improve transparency on the progress it is making with the recovery of elective and cancer care. This should include an assessment of the results of its major recovery initiatives, including its approaches to reducing cohorts of long-waiters, CDCs, surgical hubs, outpatient transformation, and increasing specialist advice and guidance. NHSE should then consider whether the report should become annual for the duration of the recovery. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Managing NHS backlogs and waiting times in England: f) In 2024-25, with the benefit of two years of managing elective recovery, DHSC and NHSE should develop a long-term plan for returning elective and cancer services to a state in which legal and operational waiting time standards are met. DHSC should publish the plan so the public can understand at a high level how the recovery will continue after March 2025. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Digital Transformation In The Nhs: The Department and its arm’s-length bodies should: a) Maintain a comprehensive set of lessons for digital transformation from NHS and wider government experience. This should include lessons about digital transformation where organisations vary in their digital maturity and reliance on legacy IT and data. Future plans should be tested against these lessons. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Digital Transformation In The Nhs: b) Ensure that the expected technology plan for health and care includes an implementation plan with specific objectives and measurable actions that are required. The plan should include milestones for the implementation of all standards required for interoperability and must take account of the varied readiness of NHS organisations. The plan should be realistic about the time and investment required. It should also be clear about the responsibilities of local organisations, and the support available to them. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Digital Transformation In The Nhs: c) Collect more data to enable a better understanding of the full cost of delivering digital transformation and prioritise the work programme. Essential work to lay the foundations of digitisation and interoperability (including data standardisation) should be done before investment in newer technologies. There should be robust assessment of the whole-life costs and benefits of different approaches to implementing electronic patient record systems. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Digital Transformation In The Nhs: d) Alongside the implementation plan, develop specific resources and plans for high-risk issues: • Establish a resource to provide bespoke support to trusts in managing the adaptive change required for digital transformation. • Prepare a communication plan to ensure trusts, clinical staff, suppliers and the public are kept informed about what is happening and what is expected of them. • Strengthen the incentives and levers to encourage local organisations to invest sufficient resources in digital transformation. • Prepare a strategic workforce plan to support digital transformation. • Prepare plans for determining specific national requirements for clinical records, data quality, and privacy and how they will be met. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Digital Transformation In The Nhs: e) Simplify and strengthen national governance arrangements. This should include further work to provide national bodies with the levers and monitoring capability to ensure local NHS organisations and suppliers comply with national standards for existing and new technology, and for data. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Digital Transformation In The Nhs: f) Use digital maturity assessments of local organisations to gather additional information. NHSX should continue these assessments, which provide the only comparable information about trusts’ progress and identify common areas of strength and weakness. The assessments could also collect information on the costs and benefits of electronic patient record systems. (Status: Implemented)

Impacts tracker: NAO annual report

• GBP 141.536m financial impact recognized in FY 2020-21 from precedent 'Discharging Older Patients From Hospital' (Discharging older patients from hospital) [Source: NAO Annual Report and Accounts (Impact Mapping Audit)]

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 52 historical audits (Rank: 7) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Department arrangements: understanding of opportunities and challenges, use of insights and influence, whether the MVP programme is helping schools
• Scope limitations: Schools
• House of Commons Library briefing: Constituency data: School funding in England
• Public Accounts Committee status: No inquiry opened yet (Pending NAO publication)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public expenditure
• Estimated value: £65.9bn total funding allocated to English schools for 5-16 year olds in 2026-27 (cash terms), an 88% increase on the £35.1bn allocated in 2010-11. Per-pupil funding was £8,580 in 2026-27, a 65% increase on £5,190 in 2010-11.
• Source: DfE, School Funding Statistics 2025-26 (Explore Education Statistics)

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• Education recovery in schools in England (HC 1081, published 2023-02-01)
• Financial Sustainability Of Schools In England (HC 802, published 2021-11-25)
• Ofsteds Inspection Of Schools (HC 1004, published 2018-05-24)
• Converting Maintained Schools To Academies (HC 720, published 2018-02-22)
• Capital Funding For Schools (HC 1014, published 2017-02-22)

• Financial Sustainability Of Schools (HC 850, published 2016-12-14)
• Academies And Maintained Schools Oversight And Intervention (HC 721, published 2014-10-30)
• Establishing Free Schools (HC 124, published 2013-12-11)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding Education recovery in schools in England: DfE should further develop its approach to monitoring progress towards achieving the ambitions for pupils' attainment in 2030, as set out in the schools white paper, and report regularly on progress. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: No longer relevant)
• Implemented Education recovery in schools in England: DfE should use research and evidence, including exploring the possibility of systematic longitudinal monitoring, to assess education recovery in schools, including whether children have recovered lost learning and whether progress is being made to close the disadvantage gap. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Education recovery in schools in England: DfE should model the impact of withdrawing the recovery premium and subsidy for the NTP, to assess whether tutoring in schools is financially sustainable given DfE's objective for tutoring to become embedded in the school system. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Education recovery in schools in England: DfE should build on the evidence and insights being gathered from stakeholder bodies and schools to understand how recovery interventions can best support disadvantaged pupils in the way DfE intends, and use the findings to inform and share good practice. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Education recovery in schools in England: DfE should ensure regular senior oversight of education recovery in schools remains in place, since funding is to continue until 2023/24 and successfully delivering programmes and achieving education recovery is not yet assured. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Financial Sustainability Of Schools In England: We recommend that the Department and the ESFA should take the following actions: a) Assess the impact on provision of the various measures adopted by schools in response to financial pressures, for example reducing staffing levels or changing support for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. This work should include quantitative analysis and qualitative research to understand how schools have adjusted their provision and identify lessons and good practice. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Financial Sustainability Of Schools In England: b) Establish why maintained secondary schools are under particular financial pressure. The Department and the ESFA should use that information to identify any further action needed to support secondary schools to be financially sustainable. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Financial Sustainability Of Schools In England: c) Investigate why some academy trusts have built up substantial reserves. The ESFA should use that information to develop its understanding of why trusts are acting in this way, seek assurance that levels of reserves are acceptable, and take action where it has concerns that this is not the case. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Financial Sustainability Of Schools In England: d) Develop further their performance management systems so they can effectively monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of their programmes to support schools’ financial sustainability. In doing this, the Department and the ESFA should: • consistently collect good-quality data about the operation and impact of the programmes; • have systematic internal reporting against clear performance criteria using good-quality data to judge when corrective action needs to be considered and to evaluate impact; and • report publicly, routinely and on a consistent basis, on the take-up and impact of the programmes. (Status: Implemented)

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 43 historical audits (Rank: 10) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Department arrangements: system operation, understanding of recovery routes, outcomes, other bodies involved
• House of Commons Library briefing: Proceeds of Crime Bill
• Public Accounts Committee status: No inquiry opened yet (Pending NAO publication)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public income
• Estimated value: £284.5 million of assets recovered from confiscation, forfeiture and civil recovery orders in the financial year ending March 2025. This represents an increase of 15% compared to financial year ending March 2024
• Source: Home Office Asset Recovery Statistics; HMCTS Trust Statement 2024-25

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• MoD' management of losses from fraud and other economic crime (HC 1596, published 2026-01-30)
• Tackling Serious And Organised Crime (HC 2219, published 2019-06-28)
• Confiscation Orders Progress Review (HC 886, published 2016-03-11)
• Efficiency In The Criminal Justice System (HC 852, published 2016-03-01)
• Tackling Tax Fraud How Hmrc Responds To Tax Evasion The Hidden Economy And Criminal Attacks (HC 610, published 2015-12-17)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Implemented Tackling Serious And Organised Crime: The Department should accelerate its work to measure the impact of the collective efforts of government and law enforcement bodies on the prevalence of serious and organised crime. The Department and the NCA have been developing a new performance framework since 2017 but still lack the right information to know whether efforts are working. The Department should bring this development to a quick conclusion and decide on the indicators and information it needs to measure success consistently. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Tackling Serious And Organised Crime: The Department should continue to support organisations to tackle the underlying causes of serious and organised crime. In 2015-16, 4% of the front-line spending on tackling serious and organised crime was estimated to have been spent on Prevent activities, compared with 79% on Pursue activities. The Department should ensure it supports partner organisations to rebalance their efforts by improving the evidence base on what preventative activities work, sharing this evidence base widely and regularly, and using funding to incentivise organisations. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Tackling Serious And Organised Crime: The Department and the NCA should build on initial work to agree a more efficient way to distribute and share capabilities across government and law enforcement bodies. Capabilities have been inconsistently developed and often unnecessarily duplicated across bodies. The Department and the NCA should give clear direction on who should hold which capabilities to make the best use of limited resources to ensure that those capabilities are focused on tackling the greatest threats. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Tackling Serious And Organised Crime: The NCA should assess how well its new approach to identifying priority areas is directing resources to address the highest risks and threats. Between April and September 2018, the NCA, ROCUs and forces disrupted more crimes that were not a priority than crimes that were considered priority threats. The NCA should carry out an early review of its new approach to prioritising and delegating work to ensure law enforcement activity focuses on its priority threats. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Tackling Serious And Organised Crime: The Department’s work to change how it funds efforts to tackle serious and organised crime should focus on streamlining processes and giving greater certainty to organisations. Funding for serious and organised crime comes from multiple sources that are subject to annual bidding and decision processes and often paid late. The Department should ensure any changes it makes in the forthcoming Spending Review will rationalise funding sources and give organisations longer notice over future funding to allow them to plan more effectively. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Tackling Serious And Organised Crime: The government should review the effectiveness of accountability arrangements and address weaknesses as it implements its strategy. Accountability involves being responsible or answerable to someone for some action. Good governance is a core element of accountability. Governance arrangements for those tackling serious and organised crime are complex and the overall accountability framework is weak. Once the Department has finalised its plan for implementing the strategy, it should review how changes to its governance arrangements are working, including reviewing the Strategic Policing Requirement, which sets out the threats that require a coordinated policing response. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Tackling Serious And Organised Crime: It should review how performance data are used, and the success of the SRO in getting others across government and law enforcement to meet the strategy’s objectives. (Status: Implemented)

Key scrutiny information

• Audit intensity: 64 historical audits (Rank: 4) over the period April 2009 to July 2026
• Audit approach: Department arrangements: understanding of quality, future plans, regulation, funding mechanisms, financial sustainability, impact on tenants
• Scope limitations: Owners, managers, tenants
• House of Commons Library briefing: Social rented housing in England: Past trends and prospects
• Public Accounts Committee status: No inquiry opened yet (Pending NAO publication)

Estimated taxpayer value in scope

• Value category: Public expenditure
• Estimated value: 3 years: Warm homes social housing fund: £1.29bn (2025-28). Note: excludes housing benefit, and housing element of universal credit, and social and affordable homes programme
• Source: Government: Warm Homes Social Housing Fund Wave 3

Prior NAO reports on related topics

• Improving local areas through developer funding (HC 945, published 2025-06-06)
• Dangerous cladding: the government's remediation portfolio (HC 303, published 2024-11-04)
• Levelling up funding to local government (HC 191, published 2023-11-17)
• Investigation into supported housing (HC 1318, published 2023-05-10)
• Investigation Into Remediating Dangerous Cladding On High Rise Buildings (HC 370, published 2020-06-19)

• Housing In England Overview (HC 917, published 2017-01-19)

Recommendations tracker: NAO and PAC recommendations

• Outstanding Improving local areas through developer funding: In the short term, we recommend that MHCLG should introduce standardised templates for Section 106 documentation, and consider introducing templates for agreements, to reduce the amount of work for LPAs and improve consistency across areas. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Improving local areas through developer funding: In the short term, we recommend that MHCLG should amend the requirements relating to the content and presentation of IFSs, in order to make them more consistent and accessible for the purposes of local accountability. (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Improving local areas through developer funding: In the short term, we recommend that MHCLG should assess whether improving the content of IFSs would be the most effective way to provide stronger data on developer contributions, and would allow better insights and good practice to be drawn out. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Improving local areas through developer funding: In the short term, we recommend that MHCLG should review viability assessments and how they are used, including evaluating whether removing them would make the system work better, or whether there are other ways of improving outcomes (such as open book costing). (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Improving local areas through developer funding: In the short term, we recommend that MHCLG should ensure Homes England reviews the impact of the Section 106 Affordable Housing Clearing Service, looking to make it a permanent service if successful and use the information gathered for wider benefits. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Improving local areas through developer funding: In the longer term, we recommend that MHCLG should encourage a greater number of LPAs to use the CIL, by reviewing and removing barriers to introducing it for areas where it would be financially viable. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Improving local areas through developer funding: In the longer term, we recommend that MHCLG should explore whether there are simpler and more effective ways of mitigating the negative effects of development, including whether the benefits of Section 106 agreements could instead be captured through an expansion of planning conditions. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Dangerous cladding: the government's remediation portfolio: MHCLG should evaluate its code of practice for the remediation of residential buildings to ensure that it is helping residents of buildings where remediation works are planned or underway to understand whether progress in their buildings is reasonable. This is important to enable residents to use the code as a basis to query progress on their buildings and understand whether they need to take action to escalate. If the code is not delivering as intended, or not helping to reduce delays, MHCLG should work with residents to consider what more it can do to help (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Dangerous cladding: the government's remediation portfolio: If the number of buildings within the individual programmes and progress with remediation have not picked up by the end of the year, MHCLG and Homes England should consider other actions to incentivise responsible entities to apply to its programmes, and increase pace of remediation. For example, it could consider mandatory registration for buildings 11-18 metres (as it has for high-rise buildings over 18 metres), tougher enforcement activity and action to help resolve or avoid protracted disputes between stakeholders over the scope of works. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Dangerous cladding: the government's remediation portfolio: MHCLG should assess the feasibility of conducting a measurement exercise to estimate the extent of undetected fraud and error across its remediation portfolio. A measurement exercise would help it to understand the scale of the problem and whether further investigations are needed, while also supporting wider learning around controls. (Acceptance: Partially accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Dangerous cladding: the government's remediation portfolio: MHCLG should share any relevant learning with the Public Sector Fraud Authority and the Cabinet Office Complex Grants Advice Panel. It should also report the results of such an exercise in its annual report and explain how it is using them to target improvements to the design of programme controls. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Dangerous cladding: the government's remediation portfolio: MHCLG should continue to work with other teams and other government departments to enhance its understanding of how its cladding remediation activity might impact or support other government priorities; for example: MHCLG should capture how its work with other teams and other government departments has secured efficiencies and helped to ensure policies are not working at cross-purposes with other government priorities. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Dangerous cladding: the government's remediation portfolio: MHCLG should continue to work with other teams and other government departments to enhance its understanding of how its cladding remediation activity might impact or support other government priorities; for example to maximise value for money from their investment in systems, MHCLG and Homes England should explore opportunities to use data collected on buildings for other purposes (in line with data protection rules) - for example, to provide information to residents or to support cross-government objectives such as on net zero. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Levelling up funding to local government: DLUHC should further use the learning from the process and impact evaluation to build an evidence base of what works to stimulate local economies. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Outstanding Levelling up funding to local government: DLUHC should work with HM Treasury to ensure that funds for impact evaluation are secured beyond the current spending cycle and explore whether funding deadlines for the current funds can be extended to protect value for money. (Acceptance: Accepted, Status: Work in progress)
• Implemented Improving local areas through developer funding: In the short term, we recommend that MHCLG should review the perceived conflicts of interest that arise from consultants representing both LPAs and developers with regard to viability assessments, and determine whether any action is needed. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving local areas through developer funding: In the short term, we recommend that MHCLG should help LPAs to increase capacity and capability by carrying out a full assessment of the Planning Capacity and Capability Programme to understand what works and disseminate lessons. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Improving local areas through developer funding: In the short term, we recommend that MHCLG should consider how it can use existing forums or communication channels to provide clarity for LPAs regarding planning matters that fall within its remit, and to signpost them to other sources of advice where appropriate. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Dangerous cladding: the government's remediation portfolio: MHCLG should consider whether there is additional information and data that it could publish about the portfolio that would: - give residents in buildings not yet in a programme, or not yet being remediated privately, an indication of how long they might need to wait until their building is made safe. For example, MHCLG should publish a target date by which it expects all affected buildings to be remediated based on its understanding of the number of buildings to be remediated and the speed at which it expects building owners and developers to complete works. It should continue to review whether the date remains achievable as the portfolio progresses (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Dangerous cladding: the government's remediation portfolio: MHCLG should consider whether there is additional information and data that it could publish about the portfolio that would: enhance the level of transparency for Parliament and the public over portfolio performance ' and therefore whether it is achieving value for taxpayers' money or whether it needs to change approach. For example, it could publish data on the proportion of total buildings to be remediated (according to its latest estimates) for which remediation has started or completed, and a measure of whether the portfolio is on track to achieve a published target date. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Levelling up funding to local government: Given the delays to projects across the Levelling Up Fund and Towns Fund, DLUHC should set out what further action it is going to take if projects cannot be completed within the existing funding deadlines. This could include resetting expectations for what and when these funds will deliver, to take account of rising cost pressures driven by factors including inflation and capacity shortages. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Levelling up funding to local government: DLUHC should swiftly build on the simplification pathfinder pilots and embed the learning into any further rounds of the Levelling Up Fund and similar future funds. (Status: Implemented)
• Implemented Levelling up funding to local government: DLUHC should develop its plans to disseminate learning and insight from its evaluations in a timely way and engage with local authorities to maximise understanding of what works prior to waiting for final evaluation reports. (Status: Implemented)