Recommendation 13

All Departments should aim to lay their accounts and those of their agencies by an administrative deadline of 30 June after the end of the financial year, and no later than the 15 Q 72 16 Qq 50–51 17 Q 49 18 Committee of Public Accounts, Sixty-Second Report of Session 2022–23, Department of Health and Social Care 2021–22 Annual Report and Accounts, HC 997, 5 July 2023, para 5; HM Treasury, Treasury Minutes – Government Response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Sixty-first to the Sixty-seventh reports from Session 2022–23, CP 941, September 2023, para 5.3 12 Department of Health and Social Care2022–23 Annual Report and Accounts Parliamentary summer recess. Departments have a statutory deadline of 30 November to provide their accounts to the C&AG, and of 31 January to publish their annual report and accounts.19 The Department published its 2022–23 accounts on 25 January 2024, one day earlier than the previous year and six months after the parliamentary recess deadline. The Department has reported that there continues to be significant challenges in bringing the laying of its accounts back to a pre-summer recess timetable.20