The Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011 states that the non-executive committee must appoint a person or body at least once in every 5-year period to review and report on the Office for Budget Responsibility.
The OBR’s non-executive members commissioned Laura van Geest, former head of the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB), to lead the third external review of the work of the OBR in May 2024. The review concluded that “Over the last five years, the OBR has successfully navigated a series of unprecedented economic and fiscal challenges” and “that it emerges stronger from the period”. It also highlights that since 2020, “it has worked to broaden and deepen its credibility with partner institutions, academics, and across different parts of the economic, fiscal and political landscape.” The review offers recommendations on safeguarding and strengthening the OBR’s independence, infrastructure and impact.
The OBR’s non-executive members commissioned the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to lead the second external review into the work of the OBR during its first decade in April 2019. The review, published in September 2020, concludes that the OBR has established itself as a fixed part of the UK’s institutional landscape, delivering high quality publications, reducing bias in official forecasts and bringing greater transparency to the public finances. It also makes a number of recommendations, addressed to both the Government and the OBR, that could help alleviate highlighted risks that could impact our effectiveness in carrying out our remit, and further build upon our first successful decade.
In June 2015, the Chancellor to the Exchequer asked Sir Dave Ramsden, Chief Economic Adviser to HM Treasury, to carry out a review of the OBR. The review, published in September 2015, reflected the findings in the External review led by Kevin Page in summer 2014 and made a number of recommendations that would strengthen our existing work and allow us to provide deeper and broader scrutiny of its management of the public finances.
Read the exchange of letters between the Chancellor to the Exchequer and Robert Chote on the Treasury Review of the OBR on our Governance and reporting page and the Treasury Select Committee hearing on the conduct and implications of the HM Treasury-led review.
The OBR’s non-executive members commissioned Kevin Page to lead the first external review into the work of the OBR in April 2014. The Review concludes that the OBR has “laudably achieved the core duties of its mandate” and “has succeeded in reducing perceptions of bias in fiscal and economic forecasting”. It also makes recommendations on how to build upon our early successes as we approach the end of our first five years.
