About our Annual Plan

Our Plan is jointly prepared by the Auditor General for Wales and the Wales Audit Office. It describes the steps we were intending to take over the coming year towards achieving our overall ambitions and strategic objectives.  

Just before we were planning to publish, we were overtaken by the extraordinary situation of the Covid-19 outbreak. As a result, we have communicated to the public bodies that we audit that we have scaled down our work and are adopting alternative delivery approaches as we want to ensure that audit does not in any way add to the huge pressures already faced by the public sector in Wales.

Over the coming weeks and months, we will determine how best we can help the people of Wales and their public services through the current crisis, providing assurance, promoting good practice and helping ensure that public resources are used as effectively as possible.

Notwithstanding the uncertainty and difficulties that lie ahead, we believe that our overall ambitions remain the right ones.  When circumstances allow, we will pick up the pace once more on our agenda to reach our full potential as a driver of change and improvement at the heart of public services and democratic accountability.

We will provide a detailed update on any changes we make to this Plan in response to the rapidly evolving situation in our Interim Report, which will be publish in the autumn.

Audit Wales

Our ambition is to make public audit in Wales more accessible and meaningful.  

Last year, the Auditor General gathered feedback from a wide range of people in Wales, to find out what they thought of us, our work and how we communicate and engage with them. In response to feedback, we’re making improvements to the way we achieve our purpose – to ‘Assure, Explain and Inspire’.

From today, in response to feedback, we’re bringing together the various strands of our work under a single, clearer, identity – called Audit Wales. This should help to remove complexities arising from legislation and confusion around our various programmes and initiatives – some of which derives from the Wales Audit Office (our statutory Board); some around the Auditor General for Wales and some around our Good Practice Exchange programme. It will also bring our identity more in line with Welsh language and accessibility standards.

Our Annual Plan builds on the momentum we started last year, and over the next year, we’ll continue working to improve our website, the way we report our findings and the way we engage people in what we do.