Recommendation 6

The quality of the next WGA will suffer if the Treasury does not resolve challenges in its accounts production process. In recent years, the WGA has improved in quality and the Treasury has taken steps to address our recommendations, such as improving the breakdown of the purchase of goods and services note. We would like to see these improvements continue at pace. We are, however, concerned that delays in local government audit and the extension of the administrative deadlines for central government accounts will lead to delays in the Treasury receiving returns for the WGA. In the current WGA, the delay in completion of audits of local government bodies has already led to a lower quality picture of the financial performance and position of the UK public sector than in the previous year. In addition, the consolidation module of the new OSCAR II IT system is not yet finalised. These are significant challenges to Treasury’s expectation to publish the WGA 2019–20 in June 2021, one month earlier than was achieved for the WGA 2018–19. Recommendation: The Treasury should set out how it is going to meet the challenging timetable it has set for the WGA 2019–20 without leading to a decline in the quality of the account. 8 Whole of Government Accounts 2018–19 1 Treasury’s role in managing risk