The Treasury is facing a last minute rush to have qualified finance directors head up finance functions of government departments.

With just four months to go before the end of the year the government is 12 FDs short of achieving its target, Accountancy Age has learnt. Two years ago Tony Blair and Gordon Brown agreed that there should be a qualified FD at the helm of each department by the end of 2006.

A Treasury spokesman declined to name those departments out of a total of 45, yet to appoint a qualified FD, but said that it was confident the department would meet the deadline. There will be no penalty for departments that do not meet the target.

Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Williams, said he was 'astounded' that it had taken until now to hire professionally qualified FDs.

‘The government was recently boasting about how much better it had got at managing public finances but I was astounded that it had never had FDs in place before now,’ he said.

The most recent appointment was Hunarda Nouss, who will become FD at the Department for Communities and Local Government (formerly the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister). Nouss, who moves from the private sector, will take up her post next month.

The Department of Trade and Industry took on its first ever fully qualified FD this June, ICAEW-qualified accountant Mark Clarke.

But departments have accelerated attempts this year to recruit or train FDs. In April there were only 27 fully qualified FDs, while by June they had reached roughly 73% of the target.