The credit crunch scored a first this week, the nationalisation of a bank. But behind the scenes it is also having a serious impact on public sector pension schemes and proposed PFI projects. Paul...
Faced with a legal challenge, most local authorities automatically go to court. They should learn from the private sector, where cheaper and quicker alternative dispute resolution is growing in...
A brief surge in house-building by local authorities in England has failed to increase the number of council homes significantly, government figures reveal.
A Whitehall error has meant two London councils will lose special funding they were promised in the provisional local government finance settlement last year.
The new Homes and Communities Agency could be up and running by the end of the year, its chief executive designate said this week. Sir Bob Kerslake said he would like to bring forward the formal...
The 1997 Single Status Agreement was supposed to end unequal pay in local government. But a decade on, women are still underpaid, thousands of cases are clogged up in tribunals and workers are on the...
Scotland's largest local authority is to shed more than 400 posts following its decision to freeze council tax in line with the policy of the Scottish government.
Next month's decision on seven planned NHS independent sector treatment centres will show whether the government is committed to reforming the service, the CBI said this week.
Local authorities will ignore centrally imposed house-building targets unless they have financial incentives to approve developers' plans, according to a senior government adviser.
Legal action by a private firm against a not-for-profit insurance mutual set up by London local authorities could threaten its existence, its chair has warned.
An uncomfortable truth lurked amid all the congratulations that greeted last week's publication of the Audit Commission's Comprehensive Performance Assessments, lauded as the best ever by ministers,...
Police could be given extended powers to confiscate alcohol from under-18s in a crackdown on under-age drinking, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has announced.
Local authorities in Wales are to receive extra funding in return for signing up to achieving minimum standards in the main public services from 2009, Andrew Davies has told Public Finance .
New housing minister Caroline Flint provoked controversy this week by proposing that council and housing association tenants should be required to sign 'commitment contracts', showing they intend to...
Charges are a powerful means of boosting local coffers and even changing people's negative behaviour. But councils not Whitehall are best placed to judge how this should be done
The centre of government has been given a make-over, with new policy advisers and even a permanent secretary at Number 10. But they're no nearer to finding Brown's big idea, says Tony Travers
Not only can the Local Government Information Unit's new executive director juggle family and work but he's handy with the knives, too, writes Joseph McHugh