The UK’s new temporary auditor general will hold on to the role for an indefinite period, the National Audit Office has said.

Nor is there any formal process in place to appoint a successor to Sir John Bourn, who steps down at the end of this month.

Tim Burr, currently the deputy auditor general, will formally become the comptroller and auditor general in February subject to parliamentary approval. But the appointment is, the NAO has insisted, purely temporary.

‘Temporary could be quite some time,’ a spokesman for the department said this week.

Burr will stay on while a review by former Financial Services Authority chief John Tiner is undertaken into the NAO’s corporate governance. The Public Accounts Commission, the body, which commissioned Tiner, said the review would be completed by February, but might require legislation to implement.

Burr, 57, joined the NAO in 1994 as an assistant auditor general, assuming the position of Sir John’s deputy in 2000. Like Sir John he knows his way around Whitehall, having spent the first part of his career at the Cabinet Office and the Treasury.