Major Projects Authority ‘under-resourced’
15 October 2012
The government’s Major Projects Authority needs a larger workforce and budget to properly scrutinise the performance of large public sector projects, a committee of MPs has claimed.
According to the Commons public accounts committee, the creation of the authority in 2011 has delivered “some signs” of better decision making in government.But committee chair Margaret Hodge warned that a “sharply cut workforce and a budget of just £6m a year” would hamper the progress that had been made.
“The agency cannot achieve what it was set up to do,” she said. “It has to focus on only the biggest and most risky projects. Even then, it has to rely on the individual departments to play their part. Over a third of departments have been slow to adopt a new assurance system.”
She also criticised the government’s failure to publish information on the status of major projects.
The Major Projects Authority aims to address weaknesses in the central system for assuring major projects across government, and is a partnership between the Treasury and the Cabinet Office.
