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This report finds that central government departments have spent around £600 million gross on the early departures of 17,800 staff in the year from December 2010. These costs are around 45 per cent lower than they would have been under the previous Scheme. After meeting the initial costs, departments will save an estimated £400m a year on the paybill. The time it takes departments to start seeing these savings depends on how quickly they can eliminate headcount-related costs, such as on IT and property. The net present value of the early departures to the taxpayer will be between £750 and £1,400 million over the spending review period, depending on the ability of departments to eliminate costs. This figure will also be affected by whether those leaving find comparable work and pay tax, or claim benefits. Of those departments that are reducing staff numbers, the proportion of staff released ranges from less than 1 per cent at the Department of Energy and Climate Change to around 16 per cent at the Department for Communities and Local Government. Departments used large-scale open voluntary exit schemes to release staff as quickly as possible, though this meant departments could not predict accurately which staff would leave. Older, more senior staff are leaving in the first tranches. This is partly because of deliberate restructuring, but also because those staff who have worked in the civil service for longer, or who are over 50, gain more financially from taking voluntary exit or voluntary redundancy.

A Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) is an area of land containing habitats and wildlife which are of national or international importance. There are over 4,000 SSSI sites in England, protected through restrictions on activities and development which would adversely affect the sites. In 2000, the Department agreed a Public Service Agreement (PSA) target to bring 95 per cent of SSSI land area into a 'favourable' or 'recovering' condition by December 2010. The reported condition of sites has increased from 52 per cent of land area in target condition in December 2002 to 86 per cent in February 2009. The programme of SSSI condition assessments is not up-to-date and Natural England has put in place a programme of work to address the backlog of assessments by 2010, and has introduced quality assurance systems and guidelines to improve the consistency of its record keeping. Public expenditure on SSSIs has more than doubled over the past eight years, from £35.6 million a year in 2000-01 to £85.4 million in 2008-09. Financial incentives to encourage private landowners to conserve sites account for some 58 per cent of public expenditure. There is scope to improve the processes for identifying new sites and declassifying existing ones which are no longer of special interest.

Incorporating HC 1038-i-ii, session 2008-09. The DCLG departmental annual report 2009 was published as Cm. 7598 (ISBN 9780101759823)

With forty well structured and easy to follow topics to choose from, each workbook has a wide range of case studies, questions and activities to meet both an individual or organization's training needs. Whether studying for an ILM qualification or looking to enhance the skills of your employees, Super Series provides essential solutions, frameworks and techniques to support management and leadership development. *Developed by the ILM to support their Level 3 Introductory Certificate and Certificate in First Line Management *Well-structured and easy to follow *Fully revised and updated

Paperback version also available (ISBN 9780117540309). On cover: Fire and Rescue Service operational guidance. GRAs - generic risk assessments. This series only applies to England. Dated December 2010

The Committee believes that climate change is and will continue to be one of the most important challenges facing the EU and the world. Thjs report examines what the the EU is doing about climate change, what policies are in place and how they are working. Chapters cover the international context for EU policy, the EU emissions trading scheme, transport, other policy areas (including energy efficiency, renewable energy policy, nuclear energy, waste and agriculture), and the EU and the international community. The EU adopted a European Climate Change Programme, a comprehensive and relevant set of measures, but progress has been mixed. The report also finds that most member countries have not made significant progress towards their Kyoto targets for greenhouse gas reduction. It recommends that the EU emissions trading scheme be endorsed by the G8 as a model to be followed throughout the world. The lack of action to deal with the effects of aviation on climate change is seen as a major problem that needs to be addressed internationally.

The Single Payment Scheme replaced previous European Union production-based agricultural subsidy schemes from 2005. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, through the Rural Payments Agency, had chosen to implement the most complex option for reform in the shortest possible timescale, and the Agency had badly underestimated the scale of the task. This led to delays in making payments to farmers, erroneous payments and additional project and administrative costs, as reported in the Committee's earlier report (55th report session 2006-07, HC 893, ISBN 9780215036179). The Agency has estimated that there were £20 million of overpayments for the 2005 Scheme, and £17.4 million for the 2006 Scheme. The Agency has taken little action to recover the identified overpayments, with the risk that farmers may have unknowingly spent the money in the interim. Of 19 overpayments in excess of £50,000 paid in August 2006, the Agency had started the recovery process with only two of the farmers affected. Major changes made to the Agency's IT systems have enabled most farmers to receive payments earlier under the 2006 Scheme than for the 2005 Scheme. There has been a substantial impact on the costs of the business change programme to improve the Agency's efficiency, and the total project cost is now likely to exceed £300 million. In mid 2007, staff numbers in the Agency peaked at 4,600 and are not expected to reduce to 3,500 until 2010. The Agency is still not able to offer adequate advice to farmers on the progress of their claim. It was reluctant to specify targets by when such information would be available and when payments would be made under the 2008 Scheme.

The reports published as HC 1627 (ISBN 9780215040183), HC 1617 (ISBN 9780215040480), HC 1659 (ISBN 9780215041487), HC 1695 (9780215041524), HC 1796 (ISBN 9780215041586), HC 1696 (ISBN 9780215041593)

Government faces increasing pressure to do more with fewer financial resources and, with challenges such as climate change and an ageing population, will require innovation in public services. Departments have started to implement some of the recommendations of the National Audit Office's 2006 report on innovation (HC 1447-I, session 2005-06, ISBN 9780102942330), but are still not maximising the opportunities to innovate. The majority of cases of innovation originate with senior management within departments. There is potential to encourage more innovation from front line staff and service users. At the front line, public servants can be reluctant to put forward ideas where they do not appreciate how innovation relates to the goals of the organisation and can resist change they feel is forced upon them. Other barriers include risk-averse attitudes within departments and a concentration on targets, budgets and high-profile national initiatives. Departments should develop strategies for encouraging and developing innovation. It is not possible to identify exactly how much central government spends on developing innovation, but estimates by the NAO suggest that departments have allocated at least £3 billion in the form of innovation budgets, and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills announced a further £2.5 billion to be spent encouraging and supporting innovation from 2008-9 to 2010-11. There are no measures in place to assess the impact of this expenditure. Government should make use of the survey work done by the NAO for this report and develop it further to determine how effective this expenditure is.

This Committee of Public Accounts report on "The BBC's management of risk", sets out a number of recommendations on dealing with risk, and what the BBC's Executive Board should implement. Risk comes in different forms, from the risk of damaging the Corporation's reputation as a public service broadcaster to personal risk staff can experience when reporting from dangerous parts of the world. This report follows on from a National Audit Office report of the same title, and is available from the NAO website: http://www.bbcgovernorsarchive.co.uk/docs/reviews/nao_riskmanagement.pdf. Among the recommendations are: that BBC guidance needs a clearer delineation of responsibilities for risk management; that the main themes of risk management are not aligned with corporate objectives; that the BBC should update its assessments of the risks of working in hostile environments, as the abduction of journalist Alan Johnson showed; by failing to comply with its own Broadcasting Code, the BBC was fined by Ofcom over the a live phone-in competition on Blue Peter, and illustrates that some programme makers are ignoring the BBC's own editorial guidelines, exposing the corporation to reputational risk; the BBC has not related its risk to corporate objectives or assigned all risks to named owners; that BBC managers at all levels are not sufficiently engaged in the management of risk; there is still no fully satisfactory regime under which the BBC is accountable to Parliament for the value for money with which it spends licence fee payers money.