› › A Second Progress Update On The Administration Of The Single Payment Scheme By The Rural Payments Agency

A Second Progress Update on the Administration of the Single Payment Scheme by the Rural Payments Agency

Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Public Accounts Committee

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 48 pages

File Size : 41,8 MB

Release : 2009

Category : Technology & Engineering

ISBN : 9780215542588

Get eBook

Book Description

This is the third report in 3 years on the subject of administration in England of the £1.6 billion Single Payment Scheme by the Rural Payments Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (HCP 98, session 2009-10, ISBN 9780215542588), and follows an NAO report (HCP 880, session 2008-09, ISBN 9780102963182). The Committee states that oversight of the Single Payment Scheme is a singular example of comprehensively poor administration on a grand scale. With a paucity of good management information in the Agency and the complacent oversight by the Department having acted to obscure the true situation. A focus over the last two and a half years in bringing forward payments to farmers has enabled the Agency to bring its deadline forward by nearly seven weeks, but this is still six weeks off the deadline it had planned and a long way short of the standards set in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Also there has been a negligible attention to the protection of tax payers' interests. The Rural Payments Agency has spent £350 million on a cumbersome IT system that can only be supported at huge cost and which is increasingly at risk of becoming obsolete, with the data held in the system remaining riddled with errors and efforts to recover overpayments having been slow, disorganised and haphazard. The Committee identifies poor leadership within the Agency and a lack of attention by the Department. Each claim costs over six times more to process in England than in Scotland. Further the Department was not able to demonstrate an adequate grasp of the costs of administering the scheme. The Committee states that responsibility rests with the Accounting Officers to resolve this misadministration.



A progress update in resolving the difficulties in administering the single payment scheme in England

Author : Great Britain: National Audit Office

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 42 pages

File Size : 47,59 MB

Release : 2007-12-12

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 9780102951578

Get eBook

Book Description

There was a report in October 2006 (HC 1631 2005-06) which looked at the problems in administering the 2005 single payments scheme in England. This report follows up by examining the progress made in resolving outstanding problems from 2005 and processing 2006 payments. It concludes that the new management team has instilled a clearer sense of direction and virtually all the outstanding 2005 payments were made by the end of December 2006. However the Agency has identified 34,499 cases where there might be errors in the original calculations and the review of most of these cases will be completed by the end of 2007. In the interim errors in payments in the first year were likely to have been repeated in the second year and the Agency was not able to administer the 2006 single payments scheme in a fully cost-effective manner.



Cold Comfort

Author : Great Britain. Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 164 pages

File Size : 26,56 MB

Release : 2009

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 9780102962765

Get eBook

Book Description

This report sets out the results of investigation into complaints, using two representative case studies, about the administration of the 2005 Single Payment Scheme in England, including the Rural Land Register. The Ombudsman made five general findings of maladministration: the Rural Payments Agency did not meet the legal obligation to determine entitlements by 31 December 2005; Defra & RPA failed to heed the warning information of their own systems and from the Office of Government Commerce; RPA's and Defra's public statements in early 2006 failed to recognise the internal concerns they had; on 30 January 2006 Defra officials and Ministers considered RPA's position - the best case scenario was 70% of payments to be made by the end of March 2006 and they decided to tell Parliament that RPA would make the 'bulk' of payments by the end of March 2006; RPA was the only body ina position to estimate how much more digital mapping work it would have and its planning for the mapping process fell far short of getting it right. In short the Ombudman's principles of getting it right, being open and accountable and being customer focussed were not adhered to



A Progress Update in Resolving the Difficulties in Administering the Single Payment Scheme in England

Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 44 pages

File Size : 27,36 MB

Release : 2008

Category : Technology & Engineering

ISBN : 9780215521842

Get eBook

Book Description

The Single Payment Scheme replaced previous European Union production-based agricultural subsidy schemes from 2005. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, through the Rural Payments Agency, had chosen to implement the most complex option for reform in the shortest possible timescale, and the Agency had badly underestimated the scale of the task. This led to delays in making payments to farmers, erroneous payments and additional project and administrative costs, as reported in the Committee's earlier report (55th report session 2006-07, HC 893, ISBN 9780215036179). The Agency has estimated that there were £20 million of overpayments for the 2005 Scheme, and £17.4 million for the 2006 Scheme. The Agency has taken little action to recover the identified overpayments, with the risk that farmers may have unknowingly spent the money in the interim. Of 19 overpayments in excess of £50,000 paid in August 2006, the Agency had started the recovery process with only two of the farmers affected. Major changes made to the Agency's IT systems have enabled most farmers to receive payments earlier under the 2006 Scheme than for the 2005 Scheme. There has been a substantial impact on the costs of the business change programme to improve the Agency's efficiency, and the total project cost is now likely to exceed £300 million. In mid 2007, staff numbers in the Agency peaked at 4,600 and are not expected to reduce to 3,500 until 2010. The Agency is still not able to offer adequate advice to farmers on the progress of their claim. It was reluctant to specify targets by when such information would be available and when payments would be made under the 2008 Scheme.



Progress in improving stroke care

Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 44 pages

File Size : 38,78 MB

Release : 2010-03-30

Category : Medical

ISBN : 9780215553195

Get eBook

Book Description

This report (HCP 405, session 2009-10, ISBN 9780215553195), looks at the "Progress in improving stroke care" and follows an NAO report (HCP 291, ISBN 9780102963441) on the same topic. Stroke is one of the top three causes of death and the largest cause of adult disability in England, costing the NHS at least £3 billion a year in direct care costs, with wider economic costs of around £8 billion. A 2006 report (HCP 911, session 2005-06, ISBN 9780215029683) highlighted serious shortcomings across the whole stroke care pathway. The Committee welcomes demonstrable improvements in stroke care which the Department of Health has achieved since. The Department and NHS have increased the priority given to stroke, particularly the speed of the acute hospital response. However, improvements have not been universal. The Committee finds it totally unacceptable that the likelihood of receiving a timely brain scan or accessing specialist care is dependent on where and when you have a stroke. Also the improvements in hospital care are not yet matched by progress in delivering more effective support once stroke survivors leave hospital with many patients discharged from hospital continuing to struggle to obtain follow-up care and access to community rehabilitation services remains a post-code lottery. The Committee has set out a number of conclusions and recommendations.



Financial management in the European Union

Author : Great Britain: National Audit Office

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 42 pages

File Size : 44,24 MB

Release : 2010-06-11

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 9780102965247

Get eBook

Book Description

There has been a detectable improvement over the years in the financial management of European funds across the European Union. This title reports that the European Court of Auditors provided a positive Statement of Assurance, without qualification, on the reliability of the European Union's accounts for 2008.





The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 36 pages

File Size : 14,75 MB

Release : 2010

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 9780215553744

Get eBook

Book Description

This report examines the experience to date of delivering the debt advice project, and how the overall strategy for support to the over-indebted has been managed. Consumer debt stands at around £1,500 billion, and some 11% of the UK population struggle to manage their debts. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills shares responsibility for co-ordinating the strategy with the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Justice, and is responsible for the strategy's evaluation. There has been a complete failure to manage delivery of the strategy. Since 2006 the Department has also managed a project to provide face-to-face advice for those struggling with debt. The £130 million project is funded primarily from the Treasury's Financial Inclusion Fund, and delivered locally by Citizens Advice and other third sector organisations. Whilst greater success has been achieved in managing this particular project, which is delivering more debt advice than planned at a lower cost per person than budgeted, the project is currently unable to meet all the demand from those users it is intended to help. More people could be reached if the Department better understood consumer needs, the effectiveness of different methods of delivering debt advice, and the most efficient ways of providing advice. In addition, much debt advice is already provided by the private sector and the Department needs to consider both the quality of the advice provided and the contribution that private sector advice could make in the future.



Tackling Problem Drug Use

Author : Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 36 pages

File Size : 11,40 MB

Release : 2010

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 9780215553614

Get eBook

Book Description

There are 330,000 problem drug users in England. They are estimated, based on research covering the 2003-04 period, to cost society over £15 billion a year, £13.9 billion of which is due to drug-related crime. Fully one quarter of all problem drug users are hard-core offenders for whom drug treatment is ineffective and, indeed, whose offending has sharply increased after entering treatment. It is of particular concern that measures to cut problem drug use by young people are having limited effect. Preventing the young from descending into problem drug use is an essential part of bringing down the number of problem drug users in future. In 2008, the Government introduced a 10 year cross-departmental drug strategy to tackle problem drug use, which it defined as use of opiates (mainly heroin) and/or crack cocaine. The Home Office has overall responsibility for the strategy, with a number of other government departments and agencies, at national, regional and local levels, sharing responsibility for its delivery. Central and local government collectively spend £1.2 billion a year to deliver the measures set out in the strategy. Given the public money spent on the strategy and the cost to society it is unacceptable that there has not been sufficient evaluation of the programme of measures in the strategy and that it is not known if the strategy is directly reducing the overall cost of drug-related crimes. Following a recommendation made by the National Audit Office, the Home Office has agreed to produce an overall framework to evaluate and report on the value for money achieved from the strategy, with initial results from late 2011.



Scrutiny of Value for Money at the Bbc

Author : Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Committee of Public Accounts

Publisher : The Stationery Office

Page : 76 pages

File Size : 43,41 MB

Release : 2010

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 9780215553645

Get eBook

Book Description

Incorporating HC 359-i and 494-i of session 2009-10, this report draws on the work of the Committee and the National Audit Office since 2003 in examining the BBC's approach to financial matters.