A report into the spending patterns of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and key arts, sport and heritage bodies has criticised a lack of co-ordination leading to significant risks to value for money. The National Audit Office (NAO), the Government spending watchdog, has spent several months looking at the ways key organisations spend £575m of public money each year buying goods and services. The report concludes that better sharing of information and the introduction of collaborative spending could save the taxpayer £14m by 2008/09 and twice this amount within five years.
The report is part of the Governments ongoing Efficiency Review and focused on the ways sectoral bodies go about acquiring goods, services and works from third parties. As well as looking at the DCMS, it examined 25 of its largest sponsored bodies including Arts Council England, the Big Lottery Fund, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts and the UK Film Council. Major museums and galleries were also examined including Tate, the National Gallery and National Museums Liverpool. While it found that individual organisations are working to make savings to their procurement processes by renegotiating existing contracts, looking for new suppliers, and re-working ordering processes, the report suggests that only by working together can the sector achieve significant savings. Among the recommendations made are collective ordering and greater use of framework agreements where deals with suppliers are set up to serve all the organisations.
Published: 05-12-2005