The Department for Work and Pensions is considering offering providers of contracted-out Flexible New Deal services double the upfront fee originally agreed, Public Finance has learnt.
The Local Government Association is still lobbying for changes to the new inspection regime for councils just weeks before it comes into force, the association’s leader has revealed.
The Conservatives have made a bid to grab the localist agenda with the publication of a long-awaited policy paper on giving more power to local communities.
The Conservatives have called on the government to use public funds to rescue Private Finance Initiative projects that have ground to a halt because of the credit crunch.
A system for improving the efficiency of government buildings is to be rolled out across the public sector, it has been announced. The Office of Government Commerce has already made its Property...
The auditing and monitoring of the cost of major capital projects in Scotland is ‘often inadequate and piecemeal’, according to an influential committee of MSPs...
Diverting offenders with mental health problems away from the criminal justice system and into treatment could save £700m a year, a leading research centre has claimed...
Councils are failing to give a high enough priority to shared services initiatives at a time when there is an even greater need for efficiency measures, Scotland’s local government spending watchdog...
A government scheme for buying unwanted homes from developers should be extended to older properties that owners are struggling to sell on the open market, MPs said this week...
The head of the agency responsible for progressing the government’s £55bn school building programme has denied that it planned to raid council pension funds to finance struggling schemes...
Guidance published by the information commissioner this week might force public bodies to reveal previously undisclosed details of senior staff salaries...
Social care commissioners and providers in Wales have agreed common principles for meeting the challenges over the next ten years in a memorandum of understanding...
The government is considering allowing councils to invest billions of pounds in local communities under a range of measures proposed by the Local Government Association...
The Scottish Government’s case for new borrowing powers was strengthened this week when the Labour Party in Scotland agreed for the first time that the issue should be considered...
The outlook for the economy and the public sector remains grim as the recession gets worse, a leading expert on government spending in Scotland has warned...
A housing chief has warned that the government’s subsidy system for council properties could provide a ‘godsend’ to the far Right by forcing his council into an unpopular stock transfer...
Ministers have outlined plans for public sector employers to provide 21,000 new apprenticeships as part of a package they claim will lead to the ‘transformation’ of on-the-job training...
The chair of the Treasury select committee, John McFall, has called for the scrutiny and regulation of the financial sector to be beefed up, to prevent a recurrence of the events that led up to the...
The sharp swish of a brisk new broom has raised a bit of dust at the august Westminster headquarters of the Local Government Association in the past few months. Margaret Eaton’s unexpected arrival as...
Local authorities in England and Wales are on course for the lowest council tax rises since the tax was introduced in 1993, according to CIPFA research published this week.