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In Britain, between 1980 and 1998, the number of people classified as obese tripled to 21per cent of women and 17 per cent of men. It is estimated that this costs the economy, as a whole, �2 billion and the NHS �0.5 billion in treatment. However the response of the NHS is patchy, with no national guidelines and only 28% of health authorities taking action to address the problem. There is little activity related to the management of obesity outside of general practice but only a small proportion of GPs follow a protocol. This report recommends that there should be strategies to reduce obesity and that the Department of Health should build on the plan in the National Service Framework on c...
Since the Department's 2007 Maternity Matters strategy, there has been improvement in maternity services. However, there is wide variation between trusts in performance. The Department did not fully consider the implications of delivering its ambitions and has failed to demonstrate that it satisfactorily considered the achievability and affordability of implementing the strategy. Nor has it monitored national progress against it. In 2011, one in 133 babies was stillborn or died within several days of birth. The mortality rate has fallen over time, but comparisons with the other UK nations suggest scope for further improvement. Trusts paid £482 million for maternity clinical negligence cover...
This Draft Local Audit Bill, sets out the government's vision for the future of local audit. It has been designed to implement the government's commitment to disband the Audit Commission and re-focus audit on helping local people hold their councils and other local public bodies to account for local spending decisions. The aim of this new draft bill is to develop a locally focused audit regime, but one still retaining a high quality of audit of local government spending. The government views the current audit arrangements for local public bodies as inefficient and unnecessarily centralised, which has created a system of weak cost incentives and therefore become too focused on reporting to central government and not local people. The new audit framework will also allow bodies to appoint their own auditors from an open and competitive market. The Bill also gives new responsibilities to the Financial Reporting Council, which will act as the overall regulator for auditors; the National Audit Office, which will set the code of audit practice; and the professional audit bodies will also have a role in regulating and monitoring audits.
The private finance initiative is helping to improve the quality of public sector construction work, according to the National Audit Office. Better price certainty and on-time delivery of good quality assets have been obtained by using PFI contracts. Only 22 per cent of public building projects had exceeded the cost initially expected by the public sector. Under previous contracts up to 73 per cent had overshot the original estimate. Only eight per cent of projects were delayed by more than two months. Public sector project managers were generally satisfied with the design, construction and performance of their PFI buildings. However, NAO did not try to judge whether PFI was the best procurement method for all public sector construction projects.
Older ICT systems that are critical for the delivery of key public services ('legacy ICT') expose departments to risks which must be understood and managed. A particular risk is that departments dependent on legacy ICT will find it more challenging to achieve the business transformation envisaged by the Government in its digital strategy. Some £480 billion of the government's operating revenues and at least £210 billion of non-staff expenditure such as pensions and entitlements are reliant to some extent on legacy ICT. Good practice in managing legacy ICT as an integrated part of public service delivery is therefore crucial to maintaining the performance of these services. The reliance of ...
Dated October 2007. The publication is effective from October 2007, when it replaces "Government accounting". Annexes to this document may be viewed at www.hm-treasury.gov.uk
With unrivalled political savvy and a keen sense of irony, distinguished political scientists Anthony King and Ivor Crewe open our eyes to the worst government horror stories and explain why the British political system is quite so prone to appalling mistakes.
This is the report of the European Association of Perinatal Medicine Working Party following a workshop held in Florence, Italy, 4-7 November, 1993, on the need to achieve standardization across Europe in the methodology of perinatal audit. This document concerns primarily the audit of perinatal outcome in terms of maternal, fetal, and infant mortality and morbidity. It uses the nomenclature, definitions, and classification system of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO). The report contain seven chapters replete with tables and four appendixes on perinatal definitions and tabulations, definitions of short-term infant and long-term infant outcome indicators of perinatal morbidity, and reporting and functional classification of the causes of fetal, neonatal, and infant death.
This new edition incorporates revised guidance from H.M Treasury which is designed to promote efficient policy development and resource allocation across government through the use of a thorough, long-term and analytically robust approach to the appraisal and evaluation of public service projects before significant funds are committed. It is the first edition to have been aided by a consultation process in order to ensure the guidance is clearer and more closely tailored to suit the needs of users.