Recommendation 8

The C&AG confirmed that UKHSA had introduced “quite a lot of important governance arrangements” following its 2021–22 accounts, and that it had made progress on being able to present a more manageable set of financial data for the NAO to audit. But he stressed that there was still a long way to go. The C&AG told us that UKHSA remained in a challenging position, and that it was vital that UKHSA did not underestimate the scale of what remained to be done to implement normal accounting processes.10 We asked UKHSA whether it was confident that it could produce accounts for 2023–24 that would not receive another disclaimer. UKHSA told us that it expected that its 2023–24 accounts “absolutely will be qualified” but that it was working hard to avoid the accounts being disclaimed for a third year. The Department and UKHSA noted that the decision was for the C&AG, but UKHSA reiterated that it had plans in place to ensure that it could produce auditable accounts and “hope and anticipate that we will be able to avoid another disclaimer”.11