Select committee: Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 16
57th Report - Government services: Generating income
Published 10 Dec 2025
Addressed to HM Treasury
Public Accounts Committee Government services: Identifying costs and generating income All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Treasury acknowledged that the decision-making process is time-consuming and disproportionate for low-risk, routine adjustments like inflation-linked increases. It told us it will introduce a standardised template, adopted from the Environment Agency’s approach, with the aim of improving completeness and consistency of departmental proposals. This change is intended to reduce delays caused by incomplete information 27 C&AG’s Report, paras 2.13, 2.14 28 C&AG’s Report para 2.14 29 Q 10 30 HM Treasury, Managing Public Money, June 2025 31 Q 12 12 and help spending teams to have better conversations with departments about the justification for different levels of fee charging.32 The DVLA and MoJ support moving towards more standardised reporting, suggesting that clearer templates would help streamline the process.33 Following the evidence session, Treasury wrote to us to share a draft of the template it plans to distribute formally via a Dear Accounting Officer letter.34
From: Public Accounts Committee, 57th Report - Government services: Generating income (HC 890), 10 December 2025
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 1 April 2026 (deadline 10 February 2026).