Rachel Reeves’s Office for Value for Money is forecast to have cost taxpayers £1.6m before it is closed down later this year, it has emerged.
The quango was set up by the Chancellor in her first Budget to save taxpayers money, but it is due to be shut down in October a year after it was formed.
The OVfM was set up to assess government spending, identify inefficiencies and scrutinise investment proposals to safeguard taxpayers’ money.
The Treasury has claimed the body has been responsible for £14bn of efficiencies since it was set up. It said the OVfM would “leave a legacy of concrete improvements to value for money”.
The department has been assigned a budget from the Treasury of just over £1m for April to October this year, in addition to the £600,000 allocated from October 2024 to March.
Its budget mainly consisted of pay awards for David Goldstone, its independent chair, and his team of around 15 staff. It also includes travel expenses for Mr Goldstone and his team to travel from London to the Treasury’s Darlington Economic Campus.
Mr Goldstone was paid £950 a day and expected to work a monthly average of one day a week.
David Goldstone was paid £950 a day for his work as chair of the OVfM
The OVfM has been plagued by criticism since it was set up.
In January, MPs warned the Chancellor in a Treasury select committee report that the body risked wasting taxpayer funds.The report described the OVfM as an “understaffed, poorly defined organisation”.
Mr Goldstone had previously been linked to a string of overspending public projects including the 2012 Olympics, the restoration of the Houses of Parliament and HS2.
And his continuing roles with HS2 and the Submarine Delivery Agency meant that as OVfM chair he would be unable to look into spending by these projects because of possible conflicts of interest, despite their cost overruns.
When the OVfM was announced, it was given a time-limited existence of one year, with the possibility of extension.
Treasury sources have told The Telegraph there are no plans to extend it past October of this year.
The Treasury has said that Mr Goldstone’s responsibility in his part-time role has been to meet with Civil Service chiefs “to gain their insight into the challenges that the system presents for achieving value for money”.
His OVfM team was also tasked with meeting ministers in the run-up to this year’s July Spending Review to advise on efficiencies.
An HM Treasury spokesman said: “Working alongside departments, the Office for Value for Money has delivered £14bn of efficiencies per year.
“For too long, taxpayer money has been squandered, and we are putting an end to it. The Office for Value for Money was set up as a unique, time-limited body to place value for money at the heart of spending decisions.
“Alongside the £14bn of efficiencies, it has published findings in the 10 Year Infrastructure Strategy from two value for money studies that will improve delivery of high-risk areas of public spending, and agreed several reforms to the spending framework to leave a legacy of concrete improvements to value for money, which the government has committed to taking forward.”
