Public audit requires a different set of skills and experience from the private sector, writes Rob Whiteman. This is one of many issues that the new assurance arrangements fail to address
As the Audit Commission finally shuts its doors, there are a host of outstanding questions about practicality, cost and the value of public audit, writes Marcine Waterman
The forces of austerity and marketisation are sweeping through the English public sector, writes Gareth Davies. What must public auditors do to keep up?
Removing the ring-fence from the local government public health grant could harm Public Health England’s ability to influence outcomes, the National Audit Office has warned.
The Audit Commission’s controller of audit has raised concerns about transparency at Hampshire Fire and Rescue Authority and the London Borough of Lambeth after they failed to publish their 2013/14...
Scotland’s Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) remain inconsistent in their leadership, collaboration and scrutiny, unclear in their ambitions and uneven in their supervision, according to Audit...
Auditors today said they are not yet able to judge if the government’s flagship Universal Credit reform to the welfare system will achieve value for money.
The NHS is in a financially unsustainable position following a deterioration over the last two financial years, the National Audit Office has concluded.
Local government and NHS bodies could save as much as £440m if Whitehall extends Audit Commission contracts for local auditor services to 2020, the watchdog has said.
The Local Government Association has formed a new company to oversee outsourced local audit contracts once the Audit Commission is abolished next March.
A programme to develop civil servants’ project management skills has been established by the Cabinet Office as part of government moves to improve the performance of major taxpayer-funded schemes.
The Audit Commission’s National Fraud Initiative uncovered £229m of incorrect and dishonestly obtained payments across the UK public sector in the last two years, according to figures published today...
The National Audit Office has qualified the Whole of Government Accounts for the fourth successive year because of concerns with the quality and consistency of data.
A ten-year £92m project to disperse Welsh Government offices around the country suffered from poor governance and weak cost estimates and might not have been value-for-money, auditors said today
The government’s welfare revolution faces delays following significant IT problems. It’s a blow to ministers but provides an opportunity to correct design flaws and properly test systems
A lack of useable public information on how Whitehall performs means that assessing its overall effectiveness is an impossible task for any ‘armchair auditor’