Headcount rose by 7.6% at the National Audit Office in 2024-25, the public spending watchdog’s annual report and accounts has revealed.
According to the organisation’s report to parliament, its permanent staff numbers increased by 72 during the year in response to new requirements and a drive to contract out less work.
The NAO had an average of 1,014 permanent full-time-equivalent staff members in 2024-25, up from 942 in the previous financial year. Temporary staff numbers decreased from 22 in 2023-24 to 13 in 2024-25.
A commentary in the annual report and accounts said the increase had come “in response to a growing range of audit responsibilities relating to government organisational changes in February 2023, other additions to our audits including within the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority group, and as part of our plan to gradually contract out fewer of our whole audits”.
The annual report and accounts’ reference to “government organisational changes” will be the machinery of government changes that saw the breakup of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the creation of three new departments.
Last year, NAO head Gareth Davies told members of parliament’s Public Accounts Committee that expanding the organisation’s headcount and contracting out fewer audits was a response to the spiraling cost of external audits, making them “increasingly hard to justify”.
At the time, he projected that NAO permanent staff levels would hit 1,010 by 2024-25 – a 17% rise over the course of four years. In the end, the latest annual report and accounts has revealed the figure to be slightly higher.
Davies added that the NAO’s expanding work for the NDA group – which includes Sellafield and Magnox – had been the result of its subsidiaries struggling to find private sector auditors at “anything like a reasonable rate”.
The NAO’s annual report and accounts suggests that the organisation is recovering from some of its staff-churn problems of recent years.
According to the update, turnover of staff was below expectations for all grades in the last financial year.
A grade-by-grade breakdown contained in the report showed senior auditors and senior audit associates had the highest rate of churn: 12%. However this was significantly below the NAO’s “target” for the grades of 20% and the 2023-24 churn rate of 18%.
In November 2022, Davies told members of the Public Accounts Commission, the parliamentary body that oversees the NAO, that annualised turnover of analysts was running at 29%.
The 2024-25 annual report and accounts gives a turnover figure of 4% for senior analysts and 8% for analysts – against “target” rates of 12% and 16% respectively. Nevertheless, the latest figures are a worsening on the previous year’s 0% turnover for both grades.
Churn among trainees was 8% in 2024-25, markedly down on the previous year’s 19% – and comfortably below the “target” of 10%.
Elsewhere, the NAO’s annual report and accounts showed that Davies’s pay band increased by £10,000 between 2023-24 and 2024-25.
For the 2023-24 financial year his salary was bracketed at £225,000 to £230,000 but it rose to £235,000-£240,000 in 2024-25.