We are pleased to present our Annual Plan for 2024-25

This Plan sets out our priorities for the next 12 months, both in terms of our audit work and how we operate as a business, within the context of our overall five-year strategy. It is informed by the feedback we recently received through a survey of a wide range of stakeholders on the value and impact of our work.

Welsh public services face enormous financial, demand and workforce pressures. Though public bodies must make their own decisions about how they navigate those challenges, independent public audit provides early warning of problems arising, highlights opportunities for improving value for money, and supports good governance and financial management. This Annual Plan describes how we intend to do that in the coming year and so provide the public, the Senedd, decision-makers and influencers with the information and assurance they need about how well public money is being spent.

The biggest area of our work involves auditing the accounts of over 800 public bodies across Wales.Through the COVID pandemic period, the timeliness of our delivery of this work deteriorated. It will take several years to bring that large programme of work back to pre-pandemic timescales, but we are determined to do so. In 2024-25, we aim to continue the progress made last year to bring forward the reporting deadlines for our audit of accounts work.

We aim too to improve the timeliness of the performance audit work we deliver at individual NHS and local government bodies. With the public purse strings so tight, it is more important than ever to get value for money from every pound of public spending. In our local and national studies programmes, therefore, we aim to give even sharper focus to value for money through stronger financial and outcomes analysis. 

None of our objectives for high-quality public audit can be achieved without our staff. Over the coming year, we aim to strengthen our already successful apprentice and trainee schemes to build skills and resilience for the future. We will continue to provide an excellent, flexible employment offer that supports employee wellbeing, and a working environment that encourages collaboration and high-quality work.

Conscious of our responsibility to other parts of the public sector to contain our own operating costs, we have set challenging savings targets for 2024-25. As we do each year, we have also reviewed our framework of key performance indicators and associated targets, to ensure they remain fully aligned with our objectives and are suitably challenging.

This Annual Plan marks the mid-point of our 5-year strategy. It maintains progress towards the delivery of that strategy and ensures Audit Wales continues to use its unique perspective and expertise to assure the people of Wales that public money is being well managed, to explain how it is being used, and to inspire and empower the public sector to improve.