Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 6
67th Report - NS&I’s transformation programme
Published 13 Feb 2026
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee NS&I’s transformation programme All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The programme had suffered several serious setbacks before the Treasury gave it the attention it deserved. While NS&I is responsible for the Programme, the Treasury is NS&I’s sponsor department and, given its wider role in promoting good practice in managing major programmes and the high risk that the Programme delivery carried, we would have expected the Treasury to have been more heavily involved from the start. The Treasury had applied its usual scrutiny to the Programme’s Outline Business Case in 2020 and Full Business Case in 2023, approving each subject to conditions, but there were no consequences for not delivering. The Treasury that has been more interventionist since 2024, and told us it acknowledged that it should have intervened much earlier in the Programme. The Treasury expects NS&I to say whether it can deliver within budget when it has an agreed integrated plan, but was vague on how it would assess requests for more funding. We are concerned if further funding were to be approved without real assurance that NS&I can demonstrate it has a realistic plan. recommendation a. The Treasury should report to the Committee setting out more clearly how it will assess NS&I agreed integrated plan, including the sufficiency of its budget for the Programme. b. The Treasury should set out what it has learned from its oversight of NS&I’s Programme, and examples of what it has changed in how it looks at government activities more generally. 6 1 Causes of failure to deliver the Programme Introduction
From: Public Accounts Committee, 67th Report - NS&I’s transformation programme (HC 1237), 13 February 2026
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 7 April 2026 (deadline 13 April 2026).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government states that it "agrees with the Committee's recommendation" on each of the recommendations in the report, and sets target implementation dates between June and Autumn 2026.
- On the integrated plan, the government agrees that NS&I should prepare a realistic plan. NS&I is developing costed options, which will form the basis of a revised Full Business Case in the second quarter of 2026-27, "subject to Treasury and Ministerial process timings".
- NS&I will write to the Committee "within six months" setting out the integrated plan, including timelines and a revised estimated cost, and will provide a written update on its risk management framework "by June 2026".
- On culture, a business-wide programme of cultural change activity will be developed, with an initial plan to go to the Board and the Treasury in early Summer 2026 for "rolling implementation over the coming 12-18 months".
- The Treasury says it will evaluate NS&I's agreed plan through a full Treasury Approval Panel process and will write to the Committee in the Autumn on lessons learned from its oversight.