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The Procurement Of Consumables By National Health Service Acute And Foundation Trusts
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Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215559609 Total Pages :48 pages Book Rating :4.5/5 (596 download)
Book Synopsis The procurement of consumables by National Health Service acute and Foundation trusts by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book The procurement of consumables by National Health Service acute and Foundation trusts written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-05-20 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 165 NHS acute and Foundation hospital trusts in England spend over £4.6 billion a year on the procurement of medical supplies and other types of consumable goods. Each trust controls its own purchasing and can purchase consumables in various ways: dealing direct with suppliers; through the national supplies organisation, NHS Supply Chain; or via the regional Collaborative Procurement Hubs. They can also choose to join other trusts in collaborative purchasing arrangements for particular localities or types of supplies. The Department sees the future for NHS procurement as a 'pyramid' structure with national, regional and local procurement of different types of goods, as appropriate to the products and the supplier markets. However, this theoretical model does not reflect the current complex reality, with a profusion of bodies involved in the procurement process. Its effectiveness is open to question in the emerging landscape where Foundation Trusts act independently with no explicit incentive to co-operate. The fragmented system of procurement has produced a great deal of waste, with trusts being charged different prices for the same goods, ordering in inefficient ways and failing to control the range of products which they purchase. The NAO has estimated that trusts could save around £500 million annually, 10% of their consumables expenditure, by amalgamating small orders into larger, less frequent ones, rationalising and standardising product choices and striking committed volume deals across multiple trusts. A lack of data has limited progress towards more efficient procurement and there has not been sufficient control over procurement practices.
Book Synopsis The procurement of consumables by NHS acute and Foundation trusts by : Great Britain: National Audit Office
Download or read book The procurement of consumables by NHS acute and Foundation trusts written by Great Britain: National Audit Office and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-02-02 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A combination of inadequate information and fragmented purchasing means that NHS hospitals' procurement of consumables is poor value for money. The NAO estimates that at least £500 million a year could be saved by the NHS on its spending on consumables, and potentially much more for some products. With no central control over Foundation Trusts, the Department of Health cannot mandate more efficient procurement practices. Responsibility to demonstrate value for money in procurement falls upon the management of individual trusts. The price that trusts pay for the same items varies widely. The average variation between the highest and lowest unit price paid was 10 per cent. Some trusts are not getting value for money because they are buying many different types of the same product. For example, trusts bought 21 different types of A4 paper, 652 types of medical gloves and 1,751 different cannulas. There is also a large variation between trusts: one bought 13 different types of glove, whilst another bought 177 different types. There are unnecessary administrative costs because many trusts make multiple small purchase orders. Hospital trusts have complete freedom in purchasing decisions and can use regional procurement hubs, the NHS Supply Chain or they can buy direct from suppliers. Evidence suggests that new contracts are being established which overlap and duplicate each other. There is no national performance framework for hubs which would enable comparisons to be drawn between them or to allow an assessment of their potential optimal performance.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215045072 Total Pages :52 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (45 download)
Book Synopsis Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-05-18 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around half of all children in the UK from separated families are being brought up in poverty. In 2010-11 the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission collected and transferred £1.1 billion to parents caring for more than 880,000 children. Nevertheless significant, all too familiar and recurring challenges remain: parents are frustrated with the standard of support received from the Commission. Maintenance payments totalling some £3.7 billion are outstanding, but the Commission estimates that only £1 billion of this is collectable; and costs remain high. The Commission also faces further significant challenges in introducing its new child maintenance scheme. In particular, it will need to respond to substantial cost reductions and successfully implement a new system of charging fees to parents who choose to use the Commission's services. The Commission needs to deliver acceptable standards of service at a reasonable cost. The new child maintenance scheme should improve efficiency, but further changes are needed to streamline existing processes. The Commission has to deliver cost reductions of £117 million by 2014-15 and its plans are currently £16 million short of this target. Its cost reduction plans depend in part on a new IT system which is already late. To meet the current timetable critical testing will have to be undertaken in parallel with development work, mirroring poor practices that have contributed to the failure of a number of government IT projects. Each month of delay will increase the Commission's costs by at least £3 million and may delay planned income from fees.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215045195 Total Pages :44 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (451 download)
Book Synopsis HM Revenue & Customs by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book HM Revenue & Customs written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-05-24 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: HMRC estimates that the tax gap - the difference between taxes due and the amount actually collected - stood at £35 billion (7.9% of tax due) in 2009-10, although other estimates suggest the figure is much greater. The Compliance and Enforcement Programme brought in £4.32 billion of tax revenue over the five years to 2010-11and is expected to generate a further £8.87 billion by 2014-15. However, in shedding more than 3,300 staff, the Department lost £1.1 billion in potential tax revenue: about £10 in tax lost for every £1 in running costs saved. The Committee is also not confident that the Department is sufficiently clear about the marginal rate of return it could achieve from different levels of spending. In order to live within funding limits, the Department had to defer the introduction of new systems or reduce their scope. In particular, by delaying implementation of its new Caseflow and Spectrum systems, the Department reduced the expected additional tax revenue of £743 million by 2010-11 to £547 million by 2014-15. In this Spending Review period £917 million has been allocated to further activities to tackle tax evasion and avoidance, and to collect more debt. This investment is more than double the money spent on the Programme over the last five years, and is expected to generate an additional £7 billion a year by 2014-15. It is therefore essential that the Department learns and applies lessons learnt. There was also alarm at reports that the Department had advised that the use of managed service companies to avoid tax could ever be appropriate for full-time employees of public bodies
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215045256 Total Pages :48 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (452 download)
Book Synopsis Ministry of Defence by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Ministry of Defence written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-05-25 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ministry of Defence announced in the summer of 2010 that it had a funding gap of £38 billion over the next ten years. As part of the Government's efforts to reduce the deficit, the Department also needs to reduce its annual spending by 7.5% in real terms by 2015. It intends to achieve a significant proportion of its required savings by reducing its civilian personnel by 29,000 and its military personnel by 25,000, which it estimates will save £4.1 billion between 2011 and 2015. The Department is currently enacting a transformation programme to change its way of working in order to deliver on the Strategic Defence and Security Review priorities with fewer staff. However, the Department has put plans in place to implement reductions in its workforce before it has finalised its new operating model. The operating model will set out how the Department will meet its objectives in the future, but its reductions in workforce will be well advanced before the model is agreed. There is concern that plans to reduce the workforce have been determined more by the need to cut costs than by considering how to deliver its strategic objectives and that there is a risk of further skills gaps developing. This could make the Department increasingly reliant on external expertise with consultancy expenditure having already grown from £6 million in 2006-07 to £270 million in 2010-11.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215043764 Total Pages :44 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (437 download)
Book Synopsis Reorganising central government bodies by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Reorganising central government bodies written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-04-24 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under the Public Bodies Reform Programme the Government is reducing the number of its arm's length bodies from 904 to between 632 and 642 by the end of the current Spending Review period and will have a substantial and lasting impact. The Programme is intended to improve accountability for functions currently carried out at arm's length from Ministers. The Cabinet Office says it is on track to make £2.6 billion of administrative savings by 2015. However there are substantial reservations about the robustness of this claim. Key concerns are that: there is a risk departments are claiming savings which are actually cuts to services, when they should be including only genuine savings arising from administrative reorganisations; estimates of transition costs such as redundancy and pension costs are incomplete; the savings estimate does not fully take account of the ongoing costs to other parts of government of taking on functions being transferred from abolished bodies and some departments have wrongly included wider savings from bodies being retained, rather than just administrative savings from bodies being abolished or substantially reformed. The Cabinet Office has accepted that its savings estimate needs to be reassessed and has undertaken to 'rebase' it. Focus now needs to be on managing the Programme effectively. Departments have decided on the form of individual reorganisations themselves without clear direction from the centre, leading in some cases to inconsistent treatment of bodies with similar functions. Furthermore, departments may not be getting the best value for money from the sale or transfer of assets of bodies being abolished
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215043382 Total Pages :44 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (433 download)
Book Synopsis Department for Business, Innovation and Skills by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
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.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215040480 Total Pages :68 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (44 download)
Book Synopsis Preparations for the roll-out of smart meters by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Preparations for the roll-out of smart meters written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-01-17 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under European Directives, all member states are required to install 'intelligent metering systems' - smart meters - to at least 80% of domestic electricity consumers by 2020. The UK Government has opted for a more challenging programme, with plans for energy suppliers to install smart electricity and gas meters in all homes and smaller non-domestic premises in Great Britain by 2019. The Department estimates that the smart meters programme will cost some £11.7 billion. This large complex programme requires replacing around 53 million gas and electricity meters, with significant uncertainties over the estimated costs and benefits involved. Installation costs will be borne by consumers through their energy bills, but many of the benefits accrue in the first instance to energy suppliers. No transparent mechanism presently exists for ensuring savings to the supplier are passed on to consumers, and the track record of energy companies to date does not inspire confidence that this will happen. There remain significant uncertainties in a number of key areas in the programme and the Department needs to address these by conducting proper trials to identify and manage the risks associated with an IT project involving such a substantial amount of money which is financed by individuals as consumers. The Department needs to ensure that the vulnerable, those on low incomes and those who use prepayment meters also benefit from smart meters. It would be unacceptable if these consumers bore the costs of smart meters through higher charges without getting a share of the potential benefits.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215042842 Total Pages :56 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (428 download)
Book Synopsis Preparations for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Preparations for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-03-09 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Olympic Delivery Authority's management of its building programme has been exemplary but, due to significant increases in the cost of venue security, the likelihood of staying within the overall £9.3 billion Public Sector Funding Package is very finely balanced. The Funding Package does not cover the totality of the costs to the public purse of delivering the Games and their legacy, which are already heading for around £11 billion. Operational and financial risks have emerged in areas of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games' responsibility, and LOCOG itself now has almost no contingency left to meet further costs, even though it has done well in its revenue generation. The number of security guards required in and around the venues has more than doubled, and renegotiation of the contract for venue security does not appear to have secured any price advantage. With only 109,000 new people regularly participating in sport against an original target (which the new Government chose not to adopt) of 1 million by March 2013, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport has got poor value for money for the £450 million spent through sporting National Governing Bodies. It is unclear what the sporting participation legacy of the Games is intended to be. Responsibility for delivery of all legacy matters is shared across many different parts of Government, and this rings alarm bells about the effective integration of the various legacy plans and about clear accountability to the taxpayer.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215038968 Total Pages :44 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (389 download)
Book Synopsis The cost effective delivery of armoured vehicle capability by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
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.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215561541 Total Pages :56 pages Book Rating :4.5/5 (615 download)
Book Synopsis The failure of the FiReControl project by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book The failure of the FiReControl project written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-09-20 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FiReControl was an ambitious project with the objectives of improving national resilience, efficiency and technology by replacing the control room functions of 46 local Fire and Rescue Services in England with a network of nine purpose-built regional control centres using a national computer system. The project was launched in 2004, but following a series of delays and difficulties, was terminated in December 2010 with none of the original objectives achieved and a minimum of £469 million being wasted. The Department attempted, without sufficient mandatory powers, to impose a single, national approach on locally accountable Fire and Rescue Services who were reluctant to change the way they operated. There were no basic project approval checks and balances - decisions were taken before a business case, project plan or procurement strategy had been developed and tested. The result was hugely unrealistic forecast costs and savings, naève over-optimism on the deliverability of the IT solution and under-appreciation or mitigation of the risks. Fundamentals of project management were absent: the centres were constructed and completed whilst there was considerable delay in even awarding the IT contract, let alone developing the essential IT infrastructure. There was a high turnover of senior managers although none have been held accountable for the failure. The IT contract went to a company with no direct experience of supplying the emergency services. £84.8 million is now earmarked to meet the project's original objectives, to improve resilience, efficiency and interoperability within the Fire and Rescue Service but there is no certainty this will provide value for money.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215561619 Total Pages :68 pages Book Rating :4.5/5 (616 download)
Book Synopsis Spending reduction in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
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.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215045058 Total Pages :56 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (45 download)
Book Synopsis Adult apprenticeships by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Adult apprenticeships written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-05-17 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills works with the Skills Funding Agency (the Agency) and the National Apprenticeship Service (the Service), to deliver the Apprenticeship Programme. Adult apprentices represented 325,500, or 71%, of the 457,200 apprentices who started their apprenticeship in the 2010/11 academic year. During the 2010-11 financial year the Department spent £451 million on adult apprenticeships. The Programme has been a success more than quadrupling the number of adult apprenticeships in the four years to 2010/11 and the proportion of adult apprentices successfully completing their apprenticeship has also risen, from around a third in 2004/05 to over three-quarters in 2010/11. Further work, however, needs to be done to maximise its impacts. The Department should improve its understanding of which apprenticeships offer the biggest returns. The Service should give both employers and individuals better information about the benefits arising from different types of apprenticeship, as well as about the quality of the many training providers. The Service should do more to increase the number of employers offering apprenticeships, and to increase the proportion of advanced skill level apprenticeships achieved, moving England closer to the levels delivered in other European countries. Importantly, around one in five apprenticeships lasted for six months or less. The Service accepts concern that apprenticeships lasting for such a short period are of no proper benefit to either individuals or employers. The Service says it is tackling the problem but it needs to do more to guarantee the length and quality of training -especially the off-the-job training apprentices receive
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215040183 Total Pages :44 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (41 download)
Book Synopsis Means testing by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Means testing written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-01-12 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Government uses means testing to distribute at least £87 billion of benefits to claimants each year, around 13% of total public spending. The poorest fifth of households rely on means-tested benefits for a third of their net income. The planned introduction of a new means-tested Universal Credit will replace a number of existing means-tested benefits. Currently 30 different means tested benefits are managed by nine departments and 152 local authorities in England. But Departments have a limited understanding of how their design of benefits affects incentives for employment, the burden on claimants, take-up and administrative costs. Departments need to improve their understanding of how all benefits interact and how changes to eligibility rules can affect claimants. Complexity increases the burden on claimants which can harm take-up, and is likely to disadvantage the most vulnerable members of society in particular. The Government expects Universal Credit reforms to simplify the system and improve incentives to find work. The DWP's priority is to focus on the effective delivery of these reforms. However, success will also depend on proper coordination between Universal Credit and other means-tested benefits. In addition, DWP and HMRC are designing a real-time information (RTI) system for Universal Credit to reduce the risk of overpayments, with benefits being recalculated as soon as circumstances change. Both DWP and HMRC need to understand how the introduction of this system will impact on small businesses and the self-employed who may not have the necessary IT to administer it.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215045102 Total Pages :48 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (451 download)
Book Synopsis The free entitlement to education for three and four year olds by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book The free entitlement to education for three and four year olds written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2012-05-22 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Department for Education provides funding for local authorities to pay for three and four year olds to receive their entitlement to 15 hours of free education each week. The Department devolves delivery to local authorities and providers but it is responsible for the overall value for money from the system. In 2011-12 the Department's estimated funding for the entitlement of £1.9 billion provided over 800,000 three and four year olds with access to free education; an estimated annual allocation of approximately £2,300 per child. While the Department and local authorities have focused on ensuring places for children are available, there has been less attention on how value for money can be secured and improved. While there is evidence of educational improvement at age five, the evidence that this is sustained is questionable. The Department needs to do more to understand how educational benefits can be lasting. There is not enough good information for parents to make informed choices and there is concern at reports that some families are still not receiving the entitlement free of charge. It is important that all parents know what the entitlement is and that it should be provided completely free. Early years education has the greatest benefit for children from disadvantaged backgrounds however these children have the lowest levels of take-up and deprived areas have the lowest levels of high quality services. The Department needs to identify and share good practice from those local authorities which are having the most success.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215561848 Total Pages :44 pages Book Rating :4.5/5 (618 download)
Book Synopsis DfID financial management by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book DfID financial management written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-10-20 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report examines the Department for International Development's financial management capability, its increasing focus on value for money, and the challenges it faces in managing its increasing programme budget while reducing its overall running costs. DFID is protected from overall expenditure reductions as the Government has committed to increasing the UK's aid spending to 0.7% of gross national income by 2013. The Department faces a substantial challenge to improve its financial management while reducing its administration costs by a third over the next four years. The Committee welcomes the planned introduction, in 2011, of a finance improvement plan. DFID must now keep up the focus on better financial management. There is concern that the Department does not quantify the likely level of leakage through fraud and corruption. And DFID is only considering fraud risk at the level of delivery method rather than at a country level. Management of fraud risk will require a stronger framework for ensuring money is properly spent on the ground, with effective monitoring and pro-active anti-fraud work. The likely increase in funding via multilateral organisations (which then determine how to distribute the aid worldwide) might not ensure value for money as DFID does not have the same visibility over the cost and performance of multilaterals' programmes as it does over its own bilateral programmes. Finally, the Committee is concerned that the Department still has insufficient data to make informed investment decisions based on value for money.
Author :Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts Publisher :The Stationery Office ISBN 13 :9780215038548 Total Pages :56 pages Book Rating :4.0/5 (385 download)
Book Synopsis Protecting consumers - the system for enforcing consumer law by : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts
Download or read book Protecting consumers - the system for enforcing consumer law written by Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts and published by The Stationery Office. This book was released on 2011-11-09 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Commons Public Accounts Committee publishes its 54th report of Session 2010-12, on the basis of evidence from consumer groups, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Office of Fair Trading, and the Trading Standards Institute, examining the current arrangements for the enforcement of consumer law, and the proposed changes to the regime. Individual consumers lose around £6.6 billion every year because of the malpractices of traders. At least £4.8 billion is lost through malpractices which occur at a regional or national level, such as mass market scams, counterfeiting, and unscrupulous traders who operate over large geographical areas. The Department has overall responsibility for policy on consumer protection. However, the majority of enforcement work, from weights and measures testing to the prosecution of rogue traders, is carried out by local authority Trading Standards Services, each with jurisdiction in only its own local area. The Committee states, that the Department has limited understanding of the true cost of protecting consumers or of the success of existing interventions. There is no clear and complete information on how much enforcement activity actually costs. The approach to enforcing consumer protection has not kept pace with the changing nature of the problems it is intended to tackle, such as online shopping. Any changes the Department makes must deliver a system fit for the modern era. Responsibility for tackling regional and national instances of malpractice or rogue trading must be clearly designated.
