Download or read book House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts High Speed 2 A Review of Early Programme Preparation HC 478 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-09-09 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department for Transport has yet to present a convincing strategic case for High Speed 2. It has not yet demonstrated that this is the best way to spend £50 billion on rail investment in these constrained times, and that the improved connectivity will promote growth in the regions rather than sucking even more activity into London. The pattern so far has been for costs to spiral - from more than £16 billion to £21 billion plus for phase one - and the estimated benefits to dwindle. The Department has been making huge spending decisions on the basis of fragile numbers, out-of-date data and assumptions which do not reflect real life, such as assuming business travellers do not work on trains using modern technology. The Department has ambitious and unrealistic, plans for passing the Bill for High Speed 2. The timetable is much tighter than for either High Speed 1 or Crossrail, despite the fact High Speed 2 is a much larger programme. Not allowing enough time for preparation undermines projects from the start. A rushed approach contributed to the failure of the InterCity West Coast franchise award. The Department has increased its High Speed rail team, but getting the right mix of skills is challenging and the Department lacks the commercial skills necessary to protect taxpayers' interest on a programme of this size

Download or read book The Rural Broadband Programme HC 834 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-04 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Government has failed to deliver meaningful competition in the procurement of its £1.2 billion rural broadband programme, leaving BT effectively in a monopoly position. Despite warnings the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has allowed poor cost transparency and the lack of detailed broadband rollout plans to create conditions whereby alternative suppliers may be crowded out. Whilst BT claims it is making further concessions, this is not impacting on rural communities. Local authorities are still contractually prevented from sharing information to see if they are securing best terms for the public money they spend. Communities can still not access the detailed data they need to understand whether they will be covered by BT's scheme in their area. The lack of transparency on costs and BT's insistence on non-disclosure agreements is symptomatic of BT's exploiting its monopoly position. The Department needs to work urgently with all local authorities to publish detailed mapping of their implementation plans, down to full (7-digit) postcode level. The information should include speed of service, as soon as that is available. The Department should collect, analyse and publish data on deployment costs in the current programme, to inform its consideration of bids from suppliers under the next round of fundingMargaret Hodge was speaking as the Committee published its 50th Report of this Session which, on the basis of evidence from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and BT, examined the roll out of the rural broadband programme

Download or read book Programmes to Help Families Facing Multiple Challenges HC 668 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-04-04 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this report the Public Accounts Committee examines DCLG and DWP's programmes to help families facing multiple challenges. In 2006, the Government estimated that there were 120,000 families in England facing multiple challenges, such as unemployment and poor housing, crime and antisocial behaviour. The estimated cost to the taxpayer of providing services to support these families is £9 billion a year, of which £8 billion is spent reacting to issues and £1 billion in trying to tackle them. In 2012, DCLG and DWP each introduced separate programmes to help these families. DCLG's Troubled Families programme, with a central government budget of £448 million, aims to 'turn around' all 120,000 families by May 2015. DWP's Families with Multiple Problems programme, with a budget of £200 million, seeks to move 22% of those joining the programme into employment by March 2015. There was no clear rationale for the simultaneous introduction of two separate programmes, which focused on addressing similar issues. The integration of the programmes at the design phase was poor, leading to confusion, and contributing to the low number of referrals to the DWP's programme. But the good practice evident in DCLG's Troubled Families programme, demonstrates how central and local government agencies can work together effectively. Data sharing is critical to identifying the families most in need of the support available. Both departments should publish, alongside details of the programmes' progress against their respective targets, details of the wider benefits and financial savings that they have identified.

Download or read book BBC Digital Media Initiative HC 985 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Public Accounts Committee concludes that the BBC's Digital Media Initiative (DMI) was a complete failure. The DMI was a transformation programme that involved developing new technology for BBC staff to create, share and manage video and audio content and programmes from their desktops. Siemens were contracted to build the DMI system, but the contract was terminated and brought in-house in 2009. But the BBC failed to complete the DMI Programme and in May 2013 cancelled it at a cost to licence fee payers of £98.4 million. The BBC was far too complacent about the DMI's troubled history and the very high risks involved in taking it in-house. The DMI was 18 months behind schedule when the BBC took it in-house from Siemens. The BBC did not obtain independent technical assurance for the system design or ensure that the intended users were sufficiently engaged with the Programme. Poor governance meant that these important weaknesses went unchallenged, even when things started to go badly wrong. Projects like the DMI need to be led by an experienced senior responsible owner who has the skills, authority and determination to see the project through to successful implementation. The BBC needs to report using clear milestones that give the Executive and the Trust an unambiguous and accurate account of progress and any problems. The BBC Executive should apply more rigorous and timely scrutiny to its major projects to limit potential losses and the BBC Trust must be more proactive in chasing and challenging the BBC Executive's performance.

Download or read book The Blunders of Our Governments written by Anthony King and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-09-04 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With unrivalled political savvy and a keen sense of irony, distinguished political scientists Anthony King and Ivor Crewe open our eyes to the worst government horror stories and explain why the British political system is quite so prone to appalling mistakes.

Download or read book HC 1114 Probation Landscape Review written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ministry of Justice is implementing wholesale changes to how rehabilitation services for offenders are delivered in England and Wales on a highly ambitious timescale. It intends to introduce new private and voluntary providers, bring in a payment by results system, create a new National Probation Service and extend the service to short-term prisoners in a very short time period. This is very challenging and this report sets out a number of risks that need to be managed. The probation service in England and Wales supervised 225,000 offenders in our communities during 2012-13, at a cost of £853 million. The service is currently delivered by 35 Probation Trusts which are independent Non-Departmental Public Bodies, reporting directly to the National Offender Management Service. As part of the Ministry's Transforming Rehabilitation reforms, the Trusts will cease to operate from 31 May 2014 and will be abolished shortly afterwards, to be replaced by a National Probation Service and 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies. The scale, complexity and pace of the reforms give rise to risks around value for money which need to be carefully managed. The Committee welcomes the Accounting Officer's assurances that the Ministry will not proceed with the arrangements unless it is safe to do so. The Ministry expects the new National Probation Service and the 21 Community Rehabilitation Companies to begin operating from 1 June 2014 with only a limited opportunity for parallel running of the new arrangements during April and May 2014. The movement of staff, records and implementation of the arrangements required to make the new structures operate are ongoing. Initially the Community Rehabilitation Companies will be in public ownership pending a share sale, expected in time to launch a payment by results mechanism in 2015.

Download or read book COMPASS Provision of Asylum Accommodation HC 1000 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At any one time the Home Office (the Department) provides accommodation for around 23,000 destitute asylum seekers awaiting the outcome of their application to remain in the UK. The cost of providing this accommodation in 2011-12 was £150 million. In March 2012 the Department decided to introduce a new delivery model involving fewer and bigger housing providers than under previous contracts. There are now six regional contracts (known collectively as COMPASS), delivered by three prime contractors (G4S, Serco and Clearel, each of which has two contracts): these replaced 22 separate contracts with 13 different suppliers from across the private and voluntary sectors and local authorities. Savings of £140 million over seven years are forecast. The decision to rely on fewer, larger contractors was risky and has so far led to delays in providing suitable accommodation. The Department expected this to result in economies of scale. However, it is inconsistent with the Government's wider approach of encouraging more small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) to supply services to government. The transition to the new contracts was poorly managed: the three month mobilisation period for the contracts was very challenging. The Department has incurred additional costs and so is less likely to achieve the expected savings. The standard of the accommodation provided has often been unacceptably poor for a very fragile group of individuals and families and the companies failed to improve quality in a timely manner.

Download or read book Ministry of Justice and National Offender Management Service Managing the Prison Service HC 1001 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-04-25 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Offender Management Service (the Agency) is responsible for the prison system in England and Wales which holds around 84,000 prisoners. The prison estate consists of some 130 prisons of varying layout, geographical location, age and state of repair. The main factor behind the Agency's estate strategy, of closing small costly prisons and building new accommodation that is cheaper to run, is the need to make recurring savings. Under the strategy, the Agency had by the end of 2013, closed 13 prisons and built two new prisons. The estate strategy's objectives are to reduce resource costs; create durable, good standard accommodation and provide an estate that better meets offenders' needs, allowing more of them to work and be kept closer to their homes. Against these objectives, the Agency has built new, good quality, accommodation to time and within budget; is on track to achieve cost reductions of £70 million a year; and is starting to match better the geographical spread of prisons to the prison population. Key factors behind this good performance are that senior staff in the Agency have experience and knowledge and have remained in post throughout this period of change. However, the performance of the two new prisons, HMP Oakwood and HMP Thameside, has been poor and disappointing since they opened. They do not give sufficient priority to meeting offenders' rehabilitation needs, nor do they provide enough quality purposeful activity for prisoners. The Agency has also closed some prisons that were performing well.

Download or read book HC 1060 The Ministry of Defence Rquipment Plan 2013 23 and Major Projects Report 2013 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are still concerns over whether the MoD's Equipment Plan is affordable. The Ministry underspent by a huge £1.2 billion on the Equipment Plan in 2012-13. Yet it has no idea whether this is because of genuine savings or whether costs are simply being stored up for later years because of delays on projects. This underspending makes it tempting for the Treasury to take them as savings at the expense of the defence equipment capabilities our armed services need. The MoD also does not properly understand the costs of maintenance and technical support, despite the fact that such support costs, £87 billion over ten years, and accounts for over half of the spend on the Equipment Plan budget. It also does not know whether its contingency of £4.7 billion is a sufficient buffer against risks to the Plan. The affordability of the Equipment Plan is heavily reliant on achieving significant savings in some of its major programmes. For example, the MoD has assumed savings of over £2 billion in two large programmes, the Complex Weapons and Submarine Enterprise Performance Programmes, but achieving these will be a challenge. Any changes to these two programmes could jeopardise the expected savings and so put affordability at risk. Project teams do not yet have enough staff with the right skills to employ proper cost and risk management techniques. Treasury and Cabinet Office should look across Government at skills shortages and go for solutions that do not require bureaucratic reorganisations to recruit skilled people at market rates.

Download or read book HC 941 Establishing Free Schools written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-05-09 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent high-profile failures demonstrate that the Department for Education and the Education Funding Agency's oversight arrangements for free schools are not yet working effectively. The Department and Agency have set up an approach to oversight which emphasises schools' autonomy, but standards of financial management and governance in some free schools are clearly not up to scratch. The Agency relies on high levels of compliance by schools, yet fewer than half of free schools submitted their required financial returns for 2011-12 to the Agency on time. Whistleblowers played a major role in uncovering recent scandals when problems should have been identified through the Agency's monitoring processes. There is also concern that applications for new free schools are not emerging from areas of greatest forecast need for more and better school places. The Department needs to set out how, and by when, it will encourage applications from areas with a high or severe forecast need for extra schools places, working with local authorities where appropriate. The Department should also be more open about the reasons for making decisions. Capital costs of the free school programme are escalating. The most recent round of approved free schools had a greater proportion of more expensive types, such as secondaries, special and alternative provision, located in more expensive regions such as London, the South East and South West. If this mix of approved free schools continues, there is a risk of costs exceeding available funding.

Download or read book HC 1115 The Criminal Justice System written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Criminal Justice System is complex and to operate effectively relies on numerous interdependencies between the different bodies involved. There are weaknesses in the System which have persisted for far too long and which cause delay and inefficiency, and serve to undermine public confidence. One example is the failure to ensure the right information is available in case files, where the quality has consistently worsened; another is that a quarter of trials are cancelled or delayed because of late decisions by one or more of the agencies involved. The Home Office, Ministry of Justice and Crown Prosecution Service have made some efforts to improve, but progress in addressing the key problems remains disappointingly slow. Crime has fallen but the Departments gave little evidence linking this improvement to their actions, and while both crime and police officer numbers are down, prison numbers have remained static over the same period. The Departments' efforts to improve efficiency are taking place against a background of reduced resources and staffing, and a prison population twice as high as 20 years ago. The Departments are struggling to: improve the smooth passage of criminal cases through the System; achieve greater collaboration and efficiency between criminal justice organisations at local level; and improve the use of new technology for sharing information.

Download or read book HC 1110 Promoting Electronic Growth Locally written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-05-16 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the large sums available for promoting economic growth locally, little money has actually reached businesses. Of the £3.9 billion that has been allocated in total to these initiatives, only nearly £400 million had made it to local projects by the end of 2012-13. Under the Regional Growth Fund, the largest of the schemes, the Departments will need to spend £1.4 billion this year, compared to the £1.2 billion spent over the previous three years. Some £1 billion of the remaining £3.5 billion allocated to initiatives is currently parked with intermediary bodies such as local authorities, Local Enterprise Partnerships and banks - and the rest with the Departments. The Departments should introduce binding milestones for distributing funds and move quickly to claw back money not being spent - or spent disproportionately on administration - and redistribute it to better performers. Progress in creating jobs is falling well short of the Departments' initial expectations. The Departments' estimate of the cost per job created has also risen from £30,400 in Round One to £52,300 in Round Four - a 72% increase. The Departments also agreed that there is a risk of double-counting, with the same jobs scored more than once to different initiatives. The local growth initiatives have not been managed as a coordinated programme with a common strategy, objectives or plan. The recent creation by the Departments of a single growth directorate and a programme board is welcomed. Concern remains however that the Departments are not yet using the new oversight arrangements effectively.

Download or read book House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts BBC Severance Packages HC 476 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the three years to December 2012, the BBC gave 150 senior managers severance payments totalling £25 million. The BBC paid more salary in lieu of notice than it was obliged to in 22 of the 150 severance payments for senior managers in the three years to December 2012, at a cost of £1.4 million. It is unacceptable for the BBC, or any other public body, to give departing senior managers huge severance payments that far exceed their contractual entitlements. Some of the justifications put forward by the BBC were extraordinary. The Committee welcomes the changes that the BBC's Director General, Lord Hall, has made to cap severance pay. Recommendations include: the BBC should remind its staff that they are all individually responsible for protecting public money and challenging wasteful practices; to protect licence fee payers' interests and its own reputation, the BBC should establish internal procedures that provide clear central oversight and effective scrutiny of severance payments; the BBC Executive and the BBC Trust need to overhaul the way they conduct their business, and record and communicate decisions properly; the BBC Trust should be more willing to challenge practices and decisions where there is a risk that the interests of licence fee payers could be compromised; the BBC Trust and the BBC Executive need to ensure that decision-making is transparent and accountability taken seriously, based on a shared understanding of value for money, with tangible evidence of individuals taking public responsibility for their decisions.

Download or read book Public Law written by Mark Elliott and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 985 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public Law covers the essential topics of the public law module in an insightful and interesting way. The book guides students through key themes which help them to understand how the many strands of public law are interlinked. The authors have a real flair for capturing both the vibrant nature of public law in practice and the key contemporary debates in the field. They use practical examples to bring this subject to life and include expert commentaries on each chapter to allow students to see academic debate first-hand. Online Resource Centre:This book is accompanied by an Online Resource Centre which includes: * Updates from the authors to help students keep up-to-date with this fast-moving subject* Multiple choice questions with instant feedback to allow students to test themselves * Suggested answers to the many questions posed throughout the book to help students get to grips with the key debates and issues* A library of weblinks and advice on which websites students should use when planning their own research * Online versions of the diagrams featured in the book

Download or read book House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts Universal Credit Early Progress HC 619 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Universal Credit is the DWP's single biggest programme and enjoys cross-party support, yet its implementation has been extraordinarily poor. The failure to develop a comprehensive plan has led to extensive delay and the waste of a yet to be determined amount of public money. £425 million has been spent so far on the programme. It is likely that much of this, including at least £140 million worth of IT assets, will now have to be written off. Lack of day-to-day control meant early warning signs were missed, with senior managers becoming aware of problems only through ad hoc reviews. Pressure to deliver a programme of this magnitude within such an ambitious timescale created a fortress culture where only good news was reported and problems were denied. There has been a shocking absence of control over suppliers, with the Department failing to implement the most basic procedures for monitoring and authorising expenditure. The pilot programme is not a proper pilot. Its scope is limited and does not deal with the key issues that Universal Credit must address: the volume of claims; their complexity; change in claimants' circumstances; and the need for claimants to meet conditions for continuing entitlement to benefit. The programme will not hit its current target of enrolling 184,000 claimants by April 2014. The Department will have to speed up the later stages of the programme if it is to meet the 2017 completion date but that will pose new risks. Meeting any specific timetable from now on is less important than delivering the programme successfully

Download or read book Excess Votes 2012 13 HC 1068 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-04-30 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Committee of Public Accounts scrutinises the reasons behind individual departments exceeding their allocated resources, and reports to the House of Commons on whether it has any objection to the amounts needed to rectify the reported excesses. In 2012-13 two bodies breached their expenditure limits: the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Food Standards Agency. The Ministry of Defence also required a token increase because of a Defence Votes A excess. On the basis of the examination of the reasons why these bodies exceeded their voted, the Committee has no objection to Parliament providing the necessary amounts by means of an Excess Vote. Nevertheless, it expects the Department for Communities and Local Government to set out what actions it has taken to improve their financial management and avoid exceeding their allocated resources in the future. And, as recommended last year, HM Treasury, as the UK's Ministry of Finance, should ensure departments are fully aware of the need to operate within their voted provisions. HM Treasury should continue to regularly monitor the progress departments are making against their Estimates during the year and, where possible, take appropriate action to prevent departments exceeding their provision.

Download or read book House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts Student Loan Repayments HC 886 written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2014-02-14 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is at present around £46 billion of outstanding student loans on the Government's books, and this figure is set to rise dramatically to £200 billion by 2042 (in 2013 prices). By 2042 there will be an estimated 6.5 million borrowers of student loans. At the same time estimates for the amount of loans that will not be repaid are also rising and the Government assumes that 35-40% of outstanding loans will never be repaid. That is some £16 billion to £18 billion on the current debt of £46 billion and £70 billion to £80 billion on the estimated value of student loans by 2042. The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (the Department) is not doing enough to secure value for money from its collection arrangements. The Department is unable to accurately forecast student loan repayments, and does not have a sufficient understanding of the likely future cost of non-repayment to the taxpayer. The Student Loans Company is not doing enough to ensure that it identifies and collects all the repayments due, given the substantial size of the financial assets involved, and will need to demonstrate value for money from the proposed sale of the student loans book.