Whitehall meeting challenges of resource accounting
NAO report happy with government progress
National Audit Office HQ
The government has made more good progress in 2004/2005 in response to the
challenge of implementing resource accounting, the National Audit Office said in
its annual report summarises the results of financial audit work it has
undertaken over the last 12 months.
The watchdog issued qualified opinions on only two sets of departmental
resource accounts, compared to four accounts in the prior year while the number
of accounts qualified in relation to truth and fairness fell from two accounts
to one.
The department in question was the Home Office.
The NAO said that this department’s accounts were a ‘significant setback as
they presented ‘fundamental problems that the comptroller and auditor general
had to issue a “disclaimer of opinion” due to the lack of audit evidence such
that he could not reach an opinion on the truth and fairness of the account’.