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The cost of red tape in further education is a whopping £250 Million a year, according to the National Audit Office (NAO) which has reported that these costs can be brought down by almost £70 Million each year.

According to the spending watchdog, the administration cost for FE colleges is £180 Million per year, which the colleges have claimed can be halved if the government reduced the red tape and simplified the system.   The NAO does not believe that the expenses can be reduced to half, however, it reported that at least a quarter of the costs can be saved by removing red tape.

It pointed out while the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Skills Funding Agency acknowledge that there is a problem with the administrative burden, the watchdog report suggests there is a lack of understanding of the scale of the problem.  According to the NAO, the two funding bodies have failed to measure “the full size of the [bureaucratic] burden”.

However, the spending watchdog highlighted that reducing the administration costs could help the government protect frontline services and urged the funding bodies to coordinate their actions and et a “clear, ambitious’ target for the reduction in costs they were seeking to achieve. This would provide ‘more impetus to change”.  

‘Our estimates show that substantial savings can be made by reducing bureaucracy in further education, and demonstrate the need for focused and systematic management of these costs to drive sustained improvements in efficiency,” Amayas Morse, the Head of the NAO said. “‘The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Skills Funding Agency have the ambition to make changes to simplify the system, but they must get to grips with the issues we have raised in order to achieve value for money and prevent colleges being embroiled in red tape.”

The Further Education and Skills Minister John Hayes welcomed the report and said that the NAO recognises the positive changes put in place by the coalition government since taking office.  “We are moving at pace to cut red tape and empower the sector to respond more flexibly to the needs of learners and businesses, and many of these reforms have been effective since the NAO undertook its research earlier this year,” he said.  “I welcome the NAO recommendation that our work should be evaluated to assess the changes we are driving forward. The government will fast-track the work already begun to measure the overall impact of our reforms on colleges.”