The Treasury fined the Home Office £500,000 last year after the department failed to secure ministerial approval for awarding a civil servant a pay package of more than £150,000.
The sanction is revealed in the Home Office’s annual report and accounts, published this month.
The report says the Treasury reduced the Home Office’s total budget for 2023-24 by £0.5 million “for failing to secure approval from the chief secretary to the Treasury for a remuneration package over £150,000”.
CSW understands that the Home Office sought late approval for a salary above £150,000 in error and that the department believes the budget deduction did not have any delivery impacts on the department.
Treasury guidance states that departments must get sign-off from the the chief secretary to the Treasury for pay packages worth more than £150,000, or if they include performance-related bonuses of more than £17,500.
The report does not indicate which appointment breached the guidance.
Seven years ago, the Home Office was fined £366,900 for failing to secure Treasury approval for a £500,000 salary for Dame Lowell Goddard, who led a child abuse inquiry, in 2015-16.
Departments are also responsible for ensuring their sponsored organisations follow the correct process and can be sanctioned for their non-compliance.
The guidance states that financial sanctions for breaching the requirements are set at a maximum of five times the remuneration package of the individual(s) in question and are at the discretion of the chief secretary to the Treasury. This means the maximum sanction in this case would have been more than £750,000.
“When considering the severity of potential sanctions the CST may consider mitigating circumstances, the value of the remuneration package and previous compliance with pay controls,” the guidance adds.
The Treasury has recently got itself in hot water over the appointment of a senior civil servant who has donated more than £20,000 to the Labour Party in the last decade and spent more than six months as a senior business adviser to the party.