On Wednesday the 13 February, the National Assembly for Wales will debate the Public Accounts Committee’s (PAC) report on its scrutiny of Natural Resources Wales Annual Report and Accounts 2017-18.
For three years running, Natural Resources Wales (NRW) has had its accounts qualified by the Auditor General for Wales for issues relating to the award of eight timber sales contracts in May 2014. The PAC considered these issues when it scrutinised NRW’s Accounts in September.
Qualification is rare, with only one other organisation (Education and Learning Wales) having had their accounts qualified since the establishment of the Assembly. The PAC’s report refers to qualification in three consecutive years as “unprecedented and unacceptable”.
To find out more and to see the PAC’s recommendations read the PAC report (PDF, 570KB) and both the Welsh Government (PDF, 106KB) and Natural Resources Wales(PDF, 2.1MB) responses.
The PAC will be holding a scrutiny session with NRW on Monday, 11 February and on the day of the debate the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee will scrutinise NRW’s Annual Report, you can watch both live on Senedd.tv.
Article by Owen Holzinger, Senedd Research, National Assembly for Wales
