The Jobcentre Plus agency has won praise from the National Audit Office, after establishing more than 850 offices around the country in a project that was completed for £314m less than the original £...
Six central government departments, spending a total of more than £45bn, do not have a professionally qualified finance director on the board, more than a year after a Treasury deadline.
The Home Office's failure to have its accounts in good working order was 'inexcusable', its permanent secretary told a Treasury and CIPFA-hosted symposium on financial management in London on...
Local authorities will ignore centrally imposed house-building targets unless they have financial incentives to approve developers' plans, according to a senior government adviser.
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,...
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...
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
The tax credits system continues to lose £1bn a year as a result of fraud, error and overpayment, a report by the Public Accounts Committee has warned.
Britain must end its 'addiction' to the idea that choice and diversity in public services inevitably lead to inequalities, new Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has warned.
Councils should give more thought to how the revenue they collect from charging contributes to their overall financial strategy, the Audit Commission said this week.
Public sector agencies are bearing the brunt of 'round-the-clock drinking and gambling'. But Gordon Brown seems to have lost his earlier resolve to reverse the newly liberalised laws. Peter...
The IDA showed it was taking equality issues seriously when it hired big hitter Angela Mason as adviser to local government. She tells Joseph McHugh her plans
The Liberal Democrats' new leader, Nick Clegg, has advocated a new type of publicly funded school, in his first speech on public services since being elected to the top job.
All Cabinet ministers responsible for Public Service Agreements should be required to provide an annual report to Parliament outlining the progress in meeting the targets, according to the New Local...
The Parliamentary commissioner for standards, John Lyon, has confirmed that he is to launch an investigation into the funding row involving Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain following a...
The Trades Union Congress has stressed the need to maintain a united front as public sector pay negotiations go forward in a potentially hostile climate.
Prevention is the government's big idea for the NHS in 2008, with an ambitious screening programme, personal health and social care budgets and a push against obesity and binge-drinking. Noel...
Business process outsourcing is growing rapidly in local government, as cash-strapped councils agree huge deals with private firms to provide a range of back-office services. Anat Arkin examines the...
