Doctors and insurance firms in Germany are up in arms over the 'NHS-lite' health reforms introduced on April 1. Greg Bousfield looks at the problems with the existing system and explains why...
Local government faces an uncertain future. The Lyons' report has been largely rejected by ministers, there is the prospect of a messy reorganisation, and local partnerships are failing to get off...
Nurses have demanded a meeting with Chancellor Gordon Brown and Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt as they threatened industrial action over this year's staged pay award.
A white paper on children in care could be published earlier than anticipated as the government steps up the pace of change in this area, experts believe.
Investment in district general hospitals is vital if the NHS is to implement a revolution in planned surgery, the British Medical Association said this week.
The Department of Health's controversial National Programme for IT risks setting back the NHS's information system for years and has no back-up plan if it fails, the Commons Public Accounts Committee...
A government commission examining the barriers to becoming a councillor will consider salary hikes and accreditation for future town hall leaders, its chair has revealed.
The Department of Health's latest scheme to invite private companies to take control of GP services has been condemned as potentially destabilising and unnecessary.
A quarter of councils are under-performing in the services they provide to children, with the most vulnerable getting the worst service, Ofsted has said.
The future of local government finance moved up the election agenda in Scotland this week as the Liberal Democrats announced their plans for a local income tax.
NHS primary care trusts have hit back at local authorities, claiming that they too are the victims of 'cost-shunting' as social care cuts have increased demand for NHS services.
The number of jobs expected to be lost in Northern Ireland's health trusts has doubled, the Department for Health, Social Services and Public Safety has told staff.
The revolution in shared services might be slow in coming, but it will inevitably affect local authorities. This is the ideal time, argues John Thornton, for councils to review and update their...
The social services inspectorate has listed 21 systematic failures to protect the most vulnerable children and warned that these might 'get lost' as responsibility for inspection is passed to Ofsted.
Overspending NHS trusts will no longer face deductions from their resource allocations as the Department of Health has moved to change the rule two days before the end of the financial year.
Sir Michael Lyons and ministers this week united in an upbeat defence of local government reform in the face of widespread disappointment from town hall leaders, who fear many of Lyons' major...
Politicians suffer from myopia and tunnel vision they look only to the short term and take a blinkered view of the issue in hand. This is a sentiment with which many people would agree.
The latest strategy to get NHS waiting lists down is 24 hours a day surgery. But critics say it might endanger patient welfare, and boosting resources elsewhere would be more effective. Noel...
Benefits need to be made available for all disabled children and taken up by more families if the government is to eradicate child poverty by 2020, a leading think-tank has warned.
Plans to build thousands of homes in Southeast England will land the government and local authorities with an extra bill running into billions of pounds, the Environment Agency warned this week.
