Most local authorities want to make the most of their community powers and include social and environmental benefits in the contracts they award. But procurement law can be problematic
Not for Scotland the path well trodden. While Westminster endorses market-based public service reforms, the Scottish Executive is ploughing its own furrow on education, health and immigration. Iain...
The Local Government Association and unions have failed to reach an agreement over the benefit protection of existing members of the local government pension scheme, bringing the likelihood of strike...
David Rowland, the permanent secretary at the Department for Transport, has been asked by the Treasury to co-ordinate Whitehall's latest attempt at a multi-billion pound savings drive through shared...
City regions such as Birmingham and Greater Manchester should be given control of their own regeneration budgets and granted tax-raising powers, according to a report published by the Institute for...
Almost a year to the day after Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott caved into pressure on pension rights, local government union members are once again being balloted for strike action on the issue.
NHS health boards in Scotland are to receive an above-inflation average funding increase of 7.25%, bringing their allocation to £6.5bn, Health Minister Andy Kerr announced this week.
Scottish council chief executives and senior officials face new laws to make them directly accountable for their decisions and to hold them responsible for poor advice.
Social mobility has stalled, despite the government's best efforts to raise the aspirations of children from working-class homes. Effective reform of local services will be crucial to turning this...
Everyone agrees that the council tax is regressive but there's less consensus on the solution. The interim Lyons report plumped for reforming the benefit system and not the bands. But both are...
The government needs to put its house in order over how it approaches its much-publicised efficiency drive or it may find that the result is to make the public sector even less effective than it was...
Town halls are on course for average council tax increases of 4% well within the government's 5% capping threshold but still ahead of the rate of inflation.
A conflict between the government's private investment programme in schools and the education white paper means it must choose between escalating borrowing costs or significantly reducing its...
First Minister Jack McConnell hinted at the prospect of a reorganisation of local government in Scotland as local authorities set council tax levels with an average rise of 3.3%.
& is a problem halved. But not when public bodies can't agree on the best ways to collaborate. Judy Hirst explains why sharing services is so hard to do
Labour's plans for more housing depend on developers paying for the accompanying infrastructure with a new planning gain supplement. But there is opposition to this tax on building, as Mark Smulian...
When the National Audit Office investigated Whitehall's efficiency savings it found that they weren't all they seemed. Some were aspirational, some weren't efficient and others couldn't be proved....
The Private Finance Initiative has never been a free lunch for the NHS. Now even the Treasury seems to be losing its appetite for large PFI hospital schemes. Noel Plumridge explains why