Financial Services Authority staff were able to neglect basic procedures including filing and record-keeping “with ease”, according to a damning internal report into the UK market regulator’s supervision of Northern Rock before the lender’s funding crisis last year.

The findings of the FSA’s internal audit review, which was commissioned by chief executive Hector Sants, had been keenly awaited ahead of publication today, after the regulator came in for heavy criticism during a probe into the Rock crisis carried out by the UK’s parliamentary Treasury Select Committee.