Download or read book Reducing costs in the Department for Work and Pensions written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-06-23 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The NAO reports that the Department for Work and Pensions will have to make rapid progress in reorganising the way it operates if it is to meet its target of achieving sustainable running cost reductions of £2.7 billion while implementing substantial welfare reforms and a £17 billion reduction in benefits and pensions by 2014-15. Since 2007, the Department has reported reductions of £2 billion in its running costs, and initial out-turn data show that it met its target from the June 2010 Budget to reduce running costs by £535 million in 2010-11. However, the NAO has concluded that the Department must make progress quickly in order to be able to demonstrate that it can secure sustained cost reductions in a structured and strategic way. The report recognises that the DWP is only at the start of its new cost reduction challenge. However, without basing its running cost reduction plans more on robust information on the profile of its business costs and how that relates to the value of the services delivered, the Department is not in the position to make rational choices about what it should stop doing, what it should change and what it should continue. Recent cost reductions have been based largely on budget restrictions rather than on fundamental reform of working practices. Three months into the Spending Review and the Department does not yet have a detailed model of how it wants to run in the future.

Download or read book Reducing costs in the Department for Transport written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-03-13 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As part of the 2010 Spending Review the government announced a significant reduction in the budget of the Department for Transport, with spending due to be 15% lower by 2014-15, in real terms, than the Department's £12.8 billion budget in 2010-11. The Department prepared early, identifying areas for budget reductions based on good analysis. But for road users, railway passengers and taxpayers, there are many questions which remain unanswered. The Department doesn't fully understand the impact of its cuts to road maintenance. There is concern that short-term budget cutting could prove counter-productive, costing more in the long-term as a result of increased vehicle damage and the higher cost of repairing the more severe road damage. Another area of concern is rail spending. The Department spends two-thirds of its budget through third party organisations such as Network Rail and Transport for London. While information and assurance have improved over some third party spending, there is still a lack of proper accountability and transparency for Network Rail. Rail budgets aren't being reduced as much as other areas, yet passengers still face high fares. The Department hands Network Rail over £3 billion each year, underwrites debt of over £25 billion and continues to treat it as a private sector company. The National Audit Office must be allowed full audit access as quickly as possible.. Better contingency plans for dealing with threats to its planned budget reductions also need to be developed - for example if some of its planned efficiency savings do not deliver or if inflation is higher than forecast

Download or read book Cost reduction in central government written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-02-02 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report by the National Audit Office on progress by central government departments in reducing costs concludes that departments took effective action in 2010-11, cutting spending in real terms by 2.3 per cent or £7.9 billion, compared with 2009-10. The analysis of departments' accounts supports the Efficiency and Reform Group's estimate that Government spending moratoria and efficiency initiatives, including cuts to back-office and avoidable costs, contributed around half of the figure, some £3.75 billion. However, the report warns that departments are less well-placed to make the long-term changes needed to achieve the further 19 per cent over the four years to 2014-15, as required by the spending review. This is partly because of gaps in their understanding of costs and risks, making it more difficult to identify how to deliver activities and services at a permanently lower cost. Fundamental changes will be needed to achieve sustainable reductions on the scale required. It is unclear how far spending reductions represent year-on-year changes in efficiency, or whether front-line services are affected; and the departments' forward plans examined by the NAO are not based on a strategic view. Departments' financial data on basic spending patterns is sufficient to manage budgets in-year, but information about the consequences of changes in spending is less good. Longer term reform is a Cabinet Office priority and departments will need to look beyond short-term cost cutting measures and make major operational change. Cost reduction plans also need to build in contingency measures to cover unexpected risks.

Download or read book Managing change in the Defence workforce written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-02-09 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department's approach to reducing its headcount has been largely in accordance with good practice and, up to now, it has acted in a way that is consistent with value for money. However, the urgent need for the Department to cut costs means it is having to cut its headcount in advance of planning in detail how it will operate in the future, thereby risking making current skills shortages worse. The Department plans to cut its civilian workforce by 29,000 and its armed forces by 25,000. To meet these targets, the MOD has started a redundancy programme and a Voluntary Early Release Scheme, both of which run in several tranches. The most recent estimates by the Department are that the process will cost £0.9 billion and produce £4.1 billion in cost reductions (just over £3 billion net). The potential savings fluctuate with the timing of the redundancy tranches (a delay of three months to the second military tranche has reduced savings from this tranche alone by an estimated £100 million to £138 million to 2015). The Department now has to reduce the numbers in the Army by a further 5,000 by 2015 but has not worked out in detail how it will do this. Delays to the process erode the level of potential savings as the Department continues to pay salaries, benefits and contributions to pensions. Without real changes to ways of working, cutting headcount is likely to result in the Department's doing less with fewer people or, alternatively, trying to do the same with greater risk

Download or read book Cost reduction in central government written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-04-27 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The National Audit Office report on this topic published as HC 1788, session 2010-12 (ISBN 9780102975376)

Download or read book Reducing costs in HM Revenue Customs written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-07-20 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HM Revenue & Customs faces a significant challenge in securing a £1.6 billion reduction in running costs over the next four years, at the same time as increasing tax revenues, improving customer service and achieving reductions in welfare payments. HMRC has reported savings of some £1.4 billion since 2005. To achieve its cost reductions it plans to implement 24 change projects and other measures including savings in the provision of IT services, improvements in productivity, reduced sickness absence and headcount reductions. The size and shape of HMRC will change substantially as it reduces staff numbers by 10,000 and significantly reduces the number of offices it operates. HMRC has established a clear vision and specified operational priorities and revenue targets. It has not yet sufficiently defined the business performance and customer service it intends to achieve by 2015. It has good information on the different costs it incurs but only limited information on the cost of its end-to-end processes and on the cost of servicing different customers groups. It also has a limited understanding of the link between the cost and value of its activities. This has restricted its ability to assess fully the impact of cost reductions on business performance. HMRC has made no allowance in its cost reduction plans for under-delivery or slippage, and currently has no reserve of proposals on which to draw. HMRC has begun to implement its cost reduction plans but has not yet assessed all the dependencies between projects and the critical path for delivery.

Download or read book Department for Work and Pensions Public Consultation Reshaping Workplace Pensions for Future Generations Cm 8710 written by Great Britain: Department for Work and Pensions and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Reinvigorating workplace pensions1 published last November, the Government set out to explore whether there was scope for a new category of defined ambition (DA) pensions that would complement the defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) structures that currently dominate the market. Automatic enrolment and the single-tier State Pension will provide a firm foundation for saving for retirement. But if the current forms of DC pension saving become the default alternative to traditional DB, the pension income of future generations from workplace pensions will be more uncertain than for past generations. Over the last 12 months the DA project - a joint project between DWP and the pensions industry - has been exploring options in a middle ground. The Government proposes that the regulation of workplace pension schemes should not focus on the detail of benefit design but on what is important to the member: ensuring that any promise or guarantee, whether from the sponsoring employer or scheme, provider is delivered. This Government proposes to make it easier for employers to sponsor new pension schemes where benefits accrue on a specified basis (e.g. related to salary); and also to allow additional flexibilities for future accruals only within existing DB schemes, including the possibility of allowing a statutory override to facilitate these changes. The new flexibility will remove constraints from the existing legislative framework while still giving employees the certainty of a pension scheme where the benefits are defined (such as in relation to their salary) with the security of the promise being sponsored by their employer

Download or read book Means testing written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-09-14 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is clear that means testing will be used extensively for the foreseeable future as it helps target state support at the people that need it most, but it can have many other important consequences. For example, there can be disincentives for recipients of means-tested benefits to return to work. Means testing also makes the administration of benefits more complex and is associated with higher costs as well as increased rates of fraud and error. In light of proposed and ongoing reforms to benefits and related programmes, the NAO notes the importance of departments sharing good practice and learning from past experiences in the design of means tests. For example, HM Revenue and Customs has struggled in the past with unexpectedly large overpayments of tax credits (£9 billion between 2003-04 and 2009-10) because of the way that payments are determined under the legislation. Departments need to consider all of the impacts of means testing: for example, the burden on claimants, such as difficulty with completing forms and the cost of requesting advice. Issues associated with means testing, such as incorrect declarations of earnings and errors by officials in calculating entitlements, accounted for over half of all fraud and error in benefits and tax credits. There is a lack of coordination of, and overall accountability for, means testing across government. For example, no one body has responsibility for looking at how the impact of university fees will be influenced by wider means testing.

Download or read book Department for Business Innovation and Skills written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-03-23 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Skills Funding Agency provide funding for further education students aged 19-plus. The Department for Education and the Young People's Learning Agency fund further education for 16-to-18-year-olds. These two departments provided £7.7 billion in funding to the sector during the 2010/11 academic year. The various government bodies that interact with the sector have different funding, qualification and assurance systems. Differences in the information required and collected create an unnecessary burden for training providers and divert money away from learners. To provide value for money, the systems need to be appropriate, efficient, avoid unnecessary duplication, and balance the protections they provide for public money with the costs of the bureaucracy they impose. No one body is currently accountable for reducing bureaucracy in the further education sector. Instead, the two Departments and the two funding agencies maintain separate responsibilities based on their funding streams. BIS has a stated policy objective of reducing bureaucracy imposed on further education providers but would not accept overall responsibility for bringing together efforts to reduce bureaucracy in the sector. Both BIS and DfE, and their funding agencies, have launched separate initiatives designed to simplify the requirements they place on providers. However BIS does not manage the simplification as a programme with a clear and consistent goal. While BIS has required the Agency to reduce its own administrative costs by 33%, there is no rational view on the amount by which they would like to reduce bureaucracy in providers nor do they accept that measurement of progress is necessary.

Download or read book Difficult Forms written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2004 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forms are one of the most frequent ways a citizen interacts with government departments. If a form is badly designed it is likely lead to errors and increase processing costs, also the public is less inclined to believe that progress is being made to a more responsive and accessible service. Based on an NAO report (HC 1145 2002-03 ISBN 0102923604), the Committee took evidence from the Inland Revenue, DES, DWP and Passport Service on the three main issues of: designing user friendly forms; improved administrative efficiency; progress to providing online services. The \are 12 main recommendations.

Download or read book Gaining and Retaining a Job written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2005-10-13 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2004, of the 6.7 million disabled people of working age in Britain, 50 per cent were in employment compared to 75 per cent of the working age population as a whole. The Government has made a commitment to increase the employment rate of disabled people and to reduce the difference between their employment rate and the overall rate by 2006. This NAO report examines the barriers faced by disabled people in finding and retaining employment, the specialist programmes and schemes provided by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to address this issue, the quality and accessibility of support available, and the cost effectiveness of such schemes. The report finds that the DWP funds a broad range of schemes (which are managed by Jobcentre Plus and contracted out to a range of providers in the public, private and voluntary sectors) and is on course to meet its target for increasing the employment rate of disabled people. However, more progress is needed to ensure such programmes benefit a wider number of people, and recommendations made include the need to establish a more flexible modular approach to programmes; to improve data collection and verification schemes to monitor services; to promote enhanced efficiency through better contracting; to provide greater support and training for advisers; to improve the cost effectiveness of Remploy businesses and to ensure better support to help individuals find alternative employment if necessary; and for the DWP to develop a clearer strategy for engaging with employers at a local level.

Download or read book Department for Work and Pensions Five Year Strategy written by Great Britain: Department for Work and Pensions and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2005 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The welfare state of the 20th century was designed to provide support from the cradle to the grave, but the changing demographic profile of Britain - longer life-spans mean that by 2007 the number of people over state pension age will exceed the number of children - presents a challenge to such a system of support. This plan sets out the Government's strategy of aiming for an 80 per cent employment rate as the best means of keeping people out of poverty, and allowing saving for a secure retirement. Such an aspiration requires the movement into work of a proportion of those people traditionally seen as outside the labour market and with complex barriers preventing entry into that market. Supporting these inactive people into employment will require carefully tailored support. The strategy outlines the approach in three major areas: (1) supporting children and families, including helping lone parents into gainful work; (2) helping those on incapacity benefits to return to work; (3) breaking down barriers to employment faced by disabled people, older workers and ethnic minorities.

Download or read book Spending reduction in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-09-30 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around half of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's budget is spent in foreign currencies. In 2008, the Treasury removed the protection it had previously provided to the Department against exchange rate fluctuations. The FCO did not have the expertise or experience to effectively manage the risk of a fall in exchange rates, and that the Treasury imposed poor value for money conditions on forward purchasing foreign currency. As a result of a decline in the value of sterling, in September 2009 the FCO faced an overspend of £91 million on its 2009-10 budget (£72 million centrally and £18.8 million overseas), out of its total budget of £1.6 billion. It made drastic cuts to reduce this overspend. The FCO did well to reduce spending so quickly, which enabled it to live within its budget. However, many of the spending cuts made were short term in nature, and involved simply delaying or stopping some activities, rather than making lasting efficiency improvements. Not enough was done to monitor and measure the impact of the cuts and there is a risk that such short term cuts can lead to increased spending in the future. The FCO needs to achieve sustainable reductions in running costs of £100 million over the next four years, and sees the overseas estate as a potential source of these efficiencies and income. But in the past, high charges have had the unintended consequence of discouraging other government departments from sharing premises.

Download or read book The cost effective delivery of armoured vehicle capability written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-12-09 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Armoured vehicles such as tanks, reconnaissance and personnel-carrying vehicles are essential for a wide range of military tasks. Since the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, the Ministry of Defence has attempted to acquire the vehicles it needs through a number of procurement projects. However, none of the principal armoured vehicles it requires have yet been delivered, despite the MoD spending £1.1 billion since 1998, including £321 million wasted on cancelled or suspended projects. As a result there will be gaps in capability until at least 2025, making it more difficult to undertake essential tasks such as battlefield reconnaissance. Partly as a result of this £1.1 billion failure to yet deliver any armoured vehicles, and to meet the specific military demands of operating in Iraq and Afghanistan, the MoD was provided with a further £2.8 billion from the Treasury Reserve to buy Urgent Operational Requirements (UOR) vehicles. Over the past six years, the Department has removed £10.8 billion from armoured vehicle budgets up to 2021. This has left £5.5 billion available for the next ten years, which is insufficient to deliver all of the armoured vehicle programmes which are planned. The MoD needs to be clearer about its priorities, and stop raiding the armoured vehicles chest every time it needs to make savings across the defence budget. It will also need to set more realistic requirements in future if it is to deliver projects on time and to budget. The Committee expressed concern that the Department was unable to identify anyone who has been held to account for the clear delivery failures. Further, the MoD has yet to balance its defence budget fully and devise a plan to close capability gaps, despite having conducted the SDSR and two subsequent planning exercises. It needs to determine its armoured vehicle equipment priorities and deliver these as rapidly and cost-effectively as possible, including making an assessment of which of its existing vehicles should be retained after combat operations in Afghanistan cease.

Download or read book Making automatic enrolment work written by Great Britain: Department for Work and Pensions and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2010-10-27 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current policy is that new duties will be staged in between 2012 and 2016, requiring all employers to designate a pension scheme into which all of their employees, aged between 22 and state pension age, should be automatically enrolled, so long as they are earning above an annual earnings threshold (the Pensions Act 2008 sets this at £5,035, equivalent to £5,732 in today's terms). Upon automatic enrolment, a minimum of eight per cent of earnings within a band would be contributed to the pension, with at least three per cent coming from the employer. This policy is designed to maximise private pension saving by individuals without imposing compulsion. The right to opt out will remain. This review looks at the scope of automatic enrolment and whether a new national pension scheme (National Employment Savings Trust or NEST) needs to be put in place for it to work. One of the most significant recommendations that it makes is that people should only be automatically enrolled once they reach the income tax threshold (which will increase to £7.475 in 2011) but that contributions should be on earnings in excess of the National Insurance earnings threshold (£5,715 in today's prices). There should be no changes to age thresholds and automatic enrolment duties should apply to all employers, regardless of size, as now. Employers should be given three months before auto-enrolment to ease the burden on companies. If staff choose to enrol before the three month period then companies will have to make contributions

Download or read book Managing staff costs in central government written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-03-11 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The total costs of central government staff grew by 10 per cent in real terms in the ten years to 2009-10, with current costs totalling £16.4 billion. Over the same period, staff numbers fell by 1 per cent, from 497,000 full time equivalents to 493,000. The growth in staff costs is largely the result of an unplanned increase in the number of staff in higher grades. Between March 2001 and March 2010, the number of administrative grade staff declined. But all higher grades grew in number, with Civil Service management grades 6 and 7 showing a 67 per cent increase (around 14,000 posts). This change in grade mix accounts directly for approximately 50 per cent of the staffing cost increase. Some 35 per cent of the real terms increase in staff costs is due to increases in salaries and performance-related pay. A range of immediate central actions in response to spending pressures has been announced, including freezes on pay and recruitment. But the longer term reductions in staff costs required by the 2010 Spending Review will be the responsibility of departments and agencies, and many do not have a comprehensive understanding of their own staff costs or skills in order to support this cost reduction activity adequately. The scale of staff cost reductions is unlikely to be achieved by natural turnover alone. Despite proposed changes to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme, the up-front costs of voluntary or compulsory redundancy schemes and early retirements will be significant.

Download or read book Improving the Efficiency of Postal Services Procurement in the Public Sector written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2006-03-24 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All public sector organisations rely to varying degrees on postal services, costing nearly £650 million annually of which £250 million is spent by central government departments. The two biggest spenders are the Department for Work and Pensions and HM Revenue and Customs which account for over half this amount, with ten organisations accounting for 95 per cent of the total. Despite the growth in the use of internet and email, at least for the foreseeable future conventional mail will remain essential to the way public bodies communicate with the public. This NAO report examines how public sector organisations can become more effective in their procurement and management of postal services, and identifies six main areas where further improvements can be made in order to realise an estimated £31 million a year in savings by 2008-09. Two accompanying documents are available separately: case studies which examine the use of postal services in five organisations (HCP 946-II, ISBN 0102937354); and a guide which sets out examples of good practice across public and private sectors (HCP 946-III, ISBN 0102937362).