Home Office has no idea how many work there

Published on 12/12/2006 01:44

POOR book-keeping means no-one knows how many people are employed by the Home Office, a spending watchdog revealed yesterday.

The National Audit Office (NAO) also disclosed that financial failings led the department to run up an "overdraft" of 250 million.

In January, the Home Office was criticised for "extraordinary" failures after the NAO exposed "numerous errors and internal inconsistencies" in its books during the 2004-5 financial year.

The follow-up report for 2005-6 said the Home Office had worked to address many of the problems.

However, a lack of proper controls meant it was impossible to match up personnel records with the payroll, the NAO report said.

"Personnel records were difficult to locate and some could not be found at all," it said. "The Home Office does not have adequate controls to reconcile the payroll and personnel records to determine exact staff numbers."