Could your organisation identify £30 million in supplier overpayments? How confident are organisations that their suppliers are correctly accounting for public money received under their contracts?

The Financial Reporting Council announced a £6.05 million financial penalty against Deloitte for serious failures in its audits of Go-Ahead Group. The investigation concerned financial reporting between 2016 and 2020.

The regulator found that Go-Ahead subsidiaries had wrongfully retained more than £30 million of public money relating to rail franchise agreements. One subsidiary, London & South Eastern Railway, had received erroneous overpayments from the Department for Transport. Rather than notifying the Department and returning the money, it retained the funds and began recognising some of them as profits. The FRC concluded that Deloitte had failed to challenge the arrangements adequately, despite significant warning signs.

Although the October 2026 enforcement concerned Deloitte’s statutory audit responsibilities, the underlying rail franchise problems provide important lessons for commercial and contract managers. I believe that contract management must include financial oversight, not simply operational performance monitoring. Contract managers should ensure that financial information is sufficiently transparent to identify errors, inappropriate charges and amounts requiring repayment.

We are running our very popular “Designing Contract Performance Management Regimes under the Requirements of the Procurement Act” course. 15-16 December 2026. This provides practical training to enable contract managers to establish robust performance measurement systems, manage supplier records and use evidence to support commercial decisions. This course is also available as an in-house tailored event.