Catalogue description HM Treasury: Public Services and successors: Financial Management Strategy and Agencies (FMSA prefix): Registered Files

Search within or browse this series to find specific records of interest.

Date range

Details of T 561
Reference: T 561
Title: HM Treasury: Public Services and successors: Financial Management Strategy and Agencies (FMSA prefix): Registered Files
Description:

The records concern the strategy and policy concerning next steps agencies, the financial management and the efficiency of government departments, privatisation and running costs.

Date: 1993
Arrangement:

Records are arranged chronologically and in file prefix order.

Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Former reference in its original department: FMSA prefix
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

Treasury, Civil Service Management and Pay, 1990-1995

Treasury, Financial Management; Public Services, 1985-1989

Physical description: 4 file(s)
Access conditions: Open
Immediate source of acquisition:

In 2019 Treasury

Custodial history: The records were stored with the Treasury at 1 Horse Guards Road, London SW1, to 1999. Thereafter the records were stored by a third party contractor prior to their transfer to The National Archives.
Accumulation dates: 1993 to 1997
Selection and destruction information: RCP - s.3.1.1 - Government's management of the UK economy.
Accruals: No further accruals are anticipated.
Administrative / biographical background:

The records were created by the Civil Service Management and Pay (sector), Management Policy and Running Costs Group, Financial Management Division. The function of this Division was the strategy for financial management in government departments and the creation of Next Steps Agencies; separate agencies created to carry out the executive functions of government within a policy and resource framework set by a department. The Next Steps strategy was advanced on a key government aim to reduce waste and make government more efficient. Each Next Steps Agency's Chief Executive Officer would have their respective function's daily responsibilities delegated to them by the sponsoring department's Minister to be run independently from the department but answerable to it.

The origins of the work of the Financial Management Division lie as far back as 1986 and the creation of the 'Financial Management: Public Services (sector)' where the issue of running costs started to be treated as a separate area of interest to the Treasury. Running costs concerned the administrative spending by central government and the costs of wages and salaries of officials employed in the Whitehall departments. From 1986 the Treasury introduced a separate control regime for running costs, delineating such spending from wider programmes, involving goods and services and capital expenditure aimed at achieving the policy goals of a department. Through the analysis of running costs came the necessity of efficiency and proper financial management in government as a policy aim in itself. The creation of Next Step Agencies in the 1990s was just such a scheme to ensure that government functions could be carried out as efficiently and inexpensively as possible.

Have you found an error with this catalogue description?

Help with your research