Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 24
24
Accepted
Department consistently missed Treasury's administrative deadline for publishing annual reports and accounts.
Conclusion
To ensure timely accountability for the spending of public funds, Treasury set an administrative deadline of 30 June after the end of the financial year for Departments to publish their Annual Report and Accounts, and no later than parliamentary summer recess in July. The Department has a statutory deadline of 31 January to publish its annual report and accounts.46 The Department laid its 2020–21 Annual Report and Accounts on the statutory deadline of 31 January 2022, and it acknowledged that this was a “incredibly challenging year to produce the Annual Report and Accounts”47. The Department told us in a previous session held on 07 March 2022 that it was working hard to bring the publication of its 2021–22 Annual Report and Accounts forward, with an aim to publish these in November 2022.48 The 2021–22 Annual Report and Accounts were however laid on 26 January 2023, only five days earlier than the prior year.
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and commits to a multi-year plan to return to a pre-summer recess timetable for laying accounts by the 2025-26 financial year, aiming to publish the 2022-23 accounts in November 2023.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
5.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: July 2026 5.2 The department is committed to the removal of all qualifications. The department has largely addressed the root causes of ongoing qualifications, mainly through the provision of audit evidence for consumables inventories in the Core Department and Agencies’ and Group’s Statement of Financial Position. 5.3 The department is committed to a return to a pre-summer recess timetable. The department is working to a multi-year plan which aims to bring the timetable forward by approximately two months each year. The department currently aims to lay its 2022-23 accounts in November 2023 and return to a pre-summer recess timetable for the 2025-26 financial year. 5.4 However, the factors underpinning the delays in local audit completion, mainly capacity issues are not wholly within the control of the department. The government is working to address these, and successful resolution of these issues will be critical in enabling the department to lay its accounts ahead of the summer recess. For context, local audits would need to all be completed at least one month sooner than the deadline of 30 June 2023 set for the 2022-23 audit cycle. 5.5 In addition, the increased requirements on auditors (including the National Audit Office (NAO)) lead to particular challenges on a large and complex departmental group. Whilst the department and NAO recognise these challenges, they themselves are not expected to be a barrier to achieving a pre-summer recess audit timetable.