HM Treasury

Public spending & reporting

Whole of Government Accounts

29 November 2011

Whole of Government Accounts (WGA) is a consolidated set of financial statements for the UK public sector. It consolidates the audited accounts of around 1,500 organisations across the public sector, including central government departments, local authorities, devolved administrations, the health service, and public corporations, in order to produce a comprehensive, accounts-based picture of the fiscal position in any one year.

WGA is based on EU adopted International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), the system of accounts used internationally by the private sector, as adapted or interpreted for the public sector context, and is similar in presentation to private sector accounts. It complements the National Accounts figures, produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), by providing a set of financial statements based on standards familiar to users of private sector accounts.

The aim of WGA is to enable Parliament and the public better to understand and scrutinise how taxpayers’ money is spent.  By presenting the public finances in a framework familiar to the commercial and accountancy professions, WGA increases transparency and accessibility of information about public finances.

2009-10 WGA

The publication of the Whole of Governments Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2010 is the first ever set of audited financial statements for the UK public sector and is a significant milestone. The 2009-10 WGA brings together, for the first time, audited financial information from the UK’s central government, local government, the National Health Service (NHS) and public corporations. It makes clear a number of metrics that previously had been difficult to calculate, such as the net public service pension liability, the Government’s commitments under Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contracts, total provisions, and contingent liabilities. In particular, the account includes:

As this is the first year in which WGA is published, there is no historical data for comparison. Over time, annual publications of WGA will allow the user to build up a clear and consistent picture of trends and changes in the Government’s fiscal position. WGA will also allow for international comparisons of fiscal balance sheets to be made, provided that other countries’ accounts are produced on a comparable basis.

WGA is the most ambitious financial consolidation of public sector accounts carried out so far. Creating this consolidated account for the whole of the public sector has been a large and complex task, and represents a step increase in transparency and accountability.

Attached below is the audited Whole of Government Accounts for the year ended 31 March 2010.

2009-10 WGA Unaudited Summary Report

The WGA Unaudited Summary Report for the year ended 31 March 2010 was published on 13 July 2011.  It provided the Office of Budget Responsibility with the best available evidence on which to base its analysis of the public sector balance sheet for its Fiscal Sustainability Report published at the same time as this summary report.

Attached below is the Unaudited Summary Report for the year ended 31 March 2010.

Guidance for preparers

Acts of Parliament and Statutory Instruments

For England and Wales

The following links are to the OPSI website and all open in a new window

For Scotland and Northern Ireland

Some of the above documents are available in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF). If you do not have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer you can download the software free of charge from the Adobe website.

For alternative ways to read PDF documents and further information on website accessibility visit the HM Treasury accessibility page.

Contact

Back to top

Share

Facebook LinkedIn Twitter Digg RSS Stumbleupon Delicious Reddit Google Plus Share

Whole of Government Accounts

WGA 2009-10

Guidance for preparers: