By Tash Shifrin
17 July 2009
MPs have called for an urgent review of the way quangos operate across government following the Learning and Skills Council’s ‘catastrophic mismanagement’ of its college building programme.
The Commons innovation, universities, science and skills select committee said ‘government oversight failures’ had also contributed to the Building Colleges for the Future fiasco, which it said could cost ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’.
A surge in funding applications from further education colleges last year left the LSC with an estimated £5.7bn backlog. It was forced to halt the programme in December when it ran out of money.
But in a scathing report on July 17, the MPs drew much wider conclusions, extending across the myriad non-departmental public bodies. These ‘can diffuse political and financial accountability to such an extent that serious problems are not identified or addressed and responsibility for failure is at best unclear’, the MPs warned.
A review of the operation of NDPBs across ‘the whole of government is urgently required’, the report said.
It added that the now axed Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills had ‘clearly failed in its oversight duties’. The same management problems that befell the LSC ‘were also there in Dius’, including ‘a total failure to pick up messages from the sector (or apply common sense) about the scale of commitments which were being made’.
The MPs attacked the failure to prioritise Building Colleges for the Future spending and demanded that ‘all national capital programmes have an agreed mechanism for prioritisation built in to them from the start’.
Committee chair Phil Willis said the building programme had been ‘mismanaged into virtual extinction’. He added: ‘Warning signs were missed and, even worse, ignored. The LSC didn’t notice as the total value of the projects it was considering began to overshoot the budget and a review which could have prompted action was shunted around committees and policy groups.’
He added: ‘It is vital that the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills ensures such a situation is never allowed to happen again.’
Unusually, the MPs also criticised a National Audit Office report in July last year for taking too soft a tone. If the NAO had produced a more hard-hitting report, ‘the worst of the overcommitment would have been averted’, they said.
17 July 2009
MPs have called for an urgent review of the way quangos operate across government following the Learning and Skills Council’s ‘catastrophic mismanagement’ of its college building programme.
The Commons innovation, universities, science and skills select committee said ‘government oversight failures’ had also contributed to the Building Colleges for the Future fiasco, which it said could cost ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’.
A surge in funding applications from further education colleges last year left the LSC with an estimated £5.7bn backlog. It was forced to halt the programme in December when it ran out of money.
But in a scathing report on July 17, the MPs drew much wider conclusions, extending across the myriad non-departmental public bodies. These ‘can diffuse political and financial accountability to such an extent that serious problems are not identified or addressed and responsibility for failure is at best unclear’, the MPs warned.
A review of the operation of NDPBs across ‘the whole of government is urgently required’, the report said.
It added that the now axed Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills had ‘clearly failed in its oversight duties’. The same management problems that befell the LSC ‘were also there in Dius’, including ‘a total failure to pick up messages from the sector (or apply common sense) about the scale of commitments which were being made’.
The MPs attacked the failure to prioritise Building Colleges for the Future spending and demanded that ‘all national capital programmes have an agreed mechanism for prioritisation built in to them from the start’.
Committee chair Phil Willis said the building programme had been ‘mismanaged into virtual extinction’. He added: ‘Warning signs were missed and, even worse, ignored. The LSC didn’t notice as the total value of the projects it was considering began to overshoot the budget and a review which could have prompted action was shunted around committees and policy groups.’
He added: ‘It is vital that the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills ensures such a situation is never allowed to happen again.’
Unusually, the MPs also criticised a National Audit Office report in July last year for taking too soft a tone. If the NAO had produced a more hard-hitting report, ‘the worst of the overcommitment would have been averted’, they said.
