Comprehensive Performance Assessments will scrutinise councils' financial management much more rigorously from 2005 but the number of inspections will be slashed by two-thirds.
NHS trusts need to spend more of their budget on cleaning services, ministers said this week after it emerged that fewer than half of hospitals in England have good standards of cleanliness.
Bradford Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust has asked its regulator for 'time and space' to implement its financial recovery plan after its overspend was projected at more than £11m.
NHS foundation trusts are lobbying ministers to be allowed to bid for the next wave of private sector health care contracts, the Healthcare Financial Management Association conference heard last week.
The replacement for NHS star ratings in England will give patients a 'richer picture' of trusts' strengths and weaknesses and include a wider assessment of their financial position, the Healthcare...
Sixteen 'arm's-length' NHS bodies, including those concerned with fraud, pensions and estate management, will cease to function next year, it emerged this week.
Ministers will give councils extra financial support but will couple it with widespread capping to avoid big council tax increases in an election year, local government insiders believe.
The vast majority of patients in Scotland are satisfied with the service they receive from the NHS, though they are concerned that the public have little or no influence over the way it is run.
Ministers should undertake a thorough financial analysis of all new responsibilities handed to schools and guarantee funding for indirect costs such as new buildings, the National Union of Teachers...
The number of staff employed by Scottish local authorities has broken through the 250,000 barrier, provoking predictable claims of bureaucracy overload.
More than two-thirds of social services departments in England are performing well but a minority are either failing to provide adequate services or lack the ambition to improve, the chief inspector...
Local authorities and primary care trusts will be in the vanguard of government plans to transform the NHS from a national sickness service to one that promotes health and wellbeing.
The Audit Commission has quashed speculation that it will include councils' response to freedom of information legislation in Comprehensive Performance Assessments.
The inspection regime for councils and primary care trusts needs to start addressing how well they work with the voluntary sector, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Paul Boateng said this week.
The initiative giving GP practices the power to commission care for their patients should not extend to mental health services, a leading charity said this week.
Britain must become an asset-owning democracy to improve the country's social mobility, Labour's chief election strategist Alan Milburn said this week.
The NHS minimum wage will be set at £5.69 an hour after the largest health union voted in favour of a groundbreaking pay deal for more than a million health service staff.
The forthcoming green paper on adult social care will tackle older people's reluctance to take responsibility for their own provision, senior ministers said this week.
Welsh local authorities have been given a one-off minimum funding guarantee of 3.5% for 2005/06. But, despite the disruption of the council tax revaluation and funding formula changes, they have been...
The Local Government Association is preparing to slash funding to its central bodies by 4.1% next year in advance of what is expected to be a tight finance settlement in November.
Problems with care services for elderly people will continue until policy conflicts over funding levels and models of service provision have been resolved, a leading health care think tank has...
