The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has described its early release of the Autumn Budget as its “worst failure in the 15-year history of the OBR”.

On the day of the Budget, people were able to access the OBR report 38 minutes before the Chancellor’s Budget speech.

Today the OBR published the result of an investigation into how its report was published early.

The investigation confirms “the absence of any hostile cyber activity, of any malfeasance from within the OBR”.

It OBR says the early release was a “failure to protect information prior to publication” which consequently “has inflicted heavy damage on the OBR’s reputation”.

The investigation details explain: “There is a clear and obvious explanation for what happened, which is a combination of two technical errors in configuring the tools and digital infrastructure needed to keep a pre-publication document private until its intended publication time”.

It also notes that OBR chair Richard Hughes has “rightly expressed his profound apologies”.

Moving forward, the report says there is an “urgent task” to reform the way in which the twice-yearly EFOs are published.

It states: “The OBR is, like many small organisations, under-resourced for the task, and we note the use of the single-person supplier brought in to help on such occasions as a key-person risk.”

“We are therefore strongly of the view that completely new arrangements should be put in place for the publication of these major market- and time-sensitive documents.”