Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 6
6
Accepted
Treasury's reliance on departmental accounting officers creates inconsistency in fee monitoring.
Recommendation
The NAO reported that Treasury places primary reliance on individual department’s accounting officers to monitor their fees and charges. Accounting officers are responsible for maintaining effective governance and internal controls, including ensuring that fees are set appropriately and disclosed in-line with Treasury guidance.7 The Treasury highlighted that one of the challenges with this approach is that everyone is doing things in silos resulting in inconsistency across government.8 We asked the Treasury what it is looking to do to help strengthen the arrangements to improve oversight of fee setting.9 The Treasury told us it intends to do more to help accounting officers by regularly assessing and looking at the system, as well as help departments navigate it using best practice.10
Government Response Summary
HM Treasury will create a cross departmental working group to set out a comprehensive time-bound plan to be more systematic in supporting fee-charging public bodies, which will be shared with the Committee. The working group will discuss issuing operational guidance to government bodies and establish a mechanism to share good practice.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
1. PAC conclusion: The Treasury is not doing enough to actively support government bodies in managing their fees and charges effectively, resulting in inconsistent and poor practices across departments. 2 1. PAC recommendation: Alongside its Treasury minute response to this report, the Treasury should write to the Committee setting out a comprehensive time-bound plan on how it will be more systematic in supporting fee-charging public bodies. This should include issuing operational guidance on areas such as setting fees and making trade-offs; and establishing a mechanism to share good practice to support the improved financial management of fees and charges across government. 1.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: Spring 2026 1.2 HM Treasury will create a cross departmental working group to set out a comprehensive time-bound plan to be more systematic in supporting fee-charging public bodies, which will be shared with the Committee. As part of its remit, and as set out in the Committee’s recommendation, the working group will discuss issuing operational guidance to government bodies and establish a mechanism to share good practice.