23 June 2000
This move into royal circles appears to have rubbed off on the NAO, with the normally prickly watchdog politely thanking the Royal Household for their 'full co-operation'.
The NAO auditors were given 'fieldwork' access to a number of occupied palaces, including Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, although it is understood that the Queen wasn't home at the time.
The royal household spends £7.2m of public money on maintaining its residences every year and the NAO promptly concluded that its money is well spent, with its work programme efficiently organised. It even managed to praise the Department for Culture, Media and Sport for its efficient monitoring.
But in the past three financial years, the royal household has spent between 2% and 4.8% more on property maintenance than was budgeted, only managing to keep within costs through a series of efficiency savings.
It has, on occasion, also fallen short of its own performance indicators, managing to complete only 69% of projects within 5% of the original tender amount in 1994/95 and 95% of work within 10% of the let tender value in 1997/98.
The NAO takes these figures with good grace, courteously explaining that 'cost overruns in the construction industry are not uncommon'.
PFjun2000
