Recommendation 22

As part of our examination of the Department’s 2021–22 accounts, we recommended that UKHSA should urgently ensure that it had in place robust financial controls and processes and there was a clear plan to deliver unqualified accounts. Government agreed with our recommendation, and in its response told us the UKHSA was working to urgently improve and strengthen its existing financial control, to evidence compliance with government functional standards and best practice. It explained that UKHSA had established a Finance and Control Improvement Programme to inform the production of auditable accounts of 2022–23, with the aim of achieving a fully clean, unqualified audit opinion at the “earliest feasible opportunity”.7