AGO flags S$1.76 million URA fee shortfall and S$600,000 IT procurement concerns

The Auditor-General's Office (AGO) released its Report of the Auditor-General for the financial year 2025/26 on Wednesday (15 July 2026), raising 136 audit findings across government ministries, statutory boards and government-owned companies, of which 29 were assessed significant enough to detail in the report.

Among the statutory boards named was the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), where auditors flagged an undercharging of planning fees and possible irregularities in IT tenders, along with narrower observations on procurement practice.

Application fees computed differently from the rules

AGO test-checked fees charged by URA for planning permission and conservation permission applications between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2025.

Where a single application involved multiple development matters on the same site, such as erecting a new building alongside additions and alterations to an existing one, URA charged only for the matter attracting the highest applicable fee, rather than the total fees for each matter as set out in the Planning (Fees) Rules 2014.

"Under the Rules, applicants are to pay a fee for each applicable development matter where permission is sought," the report said, adding that based on legal advice, the total-fee approach should have applied. AGO estimated that 791 applications were affected, with fees charged coming to about S$1.76 million less than what should have been collected under the Rules.

URA maintained that its approach followed a cost-recovery principle rather than a strict reading of the Rules.

"This approach ensured that the cost of the evaluation effort was appropriately covered while avoiding double-charging for overlapping aspects," URA said, adding that it had applied the same method consistently since at least 2007.

Following the audit, URA said the Ministry of National Development would amend the Rules to make the cost-recovery policy intent explicit and provide clarity on how fees should be computed for such applications.

Possible irregularities in IT procurements

Separately, AGO test-checked a few open IT procurements awarded by URA between 2023 and 2025, with an approved procurement value of about S$600,000, and found possible irregularities in bids submitted by some companies.

"These included indications that they could be related to the awarded vendor through personnel connections, and that their bids might not have been genuine," the report said, adding that this may have contravened the government procurement principle of fair competition.

"URA informed us that it has zero tolerance for any attempt to undermine the integrity of its procurement process," the report said.

URA has reported the case to law enforcement agencies and implemented immediate measures, including screening procedures for related companies, and said it would further strengthen oversight through tools such as document analytics to detect possible irregularities in future procurement submissions.

Wider procurement and governance observations

Beyond the two headline findings, AGO's broader review of government-wide lapses named URA among several agencies where procurement evaluation criteria or scoring methodologies were changed only after tenders or quotations had closed — a practice the report said "risked undermining the fairness of the evaluation process," even where the eventual award outcome was unaffected. 

URA was also named, alongside the Land Transport Authority (LTA) and Workforce Singapore Agency (WSG), among agencies with lapses in managing conflict-of-interest declarations, including instances where declarations were not obtained from relevant parties or where there was no documented justification for assessing a declared conflict.

AGO noted elsewhere in the report that URA had also adopted good practice in other areas, using its GeBIZ Management Console reports to run quarterly data analytics across seven procurement compliance areas to compute risk indicators for management oversight.