Welsh council leaders hit out at an 'inadequate' settlement for local government this week, warning that council tax rises and service cuts would be inevitable.
Wales has rejected the Blair-led notion that the private sector should be a major service provider. Andrew Davies, minister for finance and public service delivery, talks to Alex Klaushofer about...
Eradicating hospital infections is not just about intensive cleaning. The ways in which demanding targets have been reached might be a cause of the problem and amount to false economies. Noel...
The timing could hardly have been worse. Job creation is the Northern Ireland Executive's top priority, Finance Minister Peter Robinson announced in his Budget.
Older people face a postcode lottery of follow-up care after falling and fracturing bones, according to a national audit by the Royal College of Physicians.
The Scottish government is examining an alternative method of funding public sector projects such as schools and hospitals after being told by the Treasury that it has no powers to replace public-...
Ways to cope with the economic and social implications of an ageing society are at last on the government's to-do list. Public Finance and Deloitte convened a round table of politicians and policy...
John Healey has hit back at local government leaders for complaining about the recent Comprehensive Spending Review settlement, saying councils must be more commercial and not look to the government...
A £250m contingency fund should be created by the Treasury to help councils facing unplanned costs and potential community tensions because of poor immigration monitoring, town hall leaders have...
When in 2005 the then education secretary Ruth Kelly baulked at implementing Sir Mike Tomlinson's radical recommendations on curriculum reform, educationalists complained that the agenda had been...
Northern Ireland's first Budget since the restoration of devolution has seen a big increase in economic development spending at the expense of social housing.
Anti-poverty campaigners this week expressed disappointment that the government's new Child Poverty Unit will not include Treasury officials, despite the department's role in achieving crucial...
The government wants neighbourhoods and communities to run more services. But with an eye-wateringly tight local government financial settlement, how will this be funded? Peter Hetherington...
Former Scottish secretary Douglas Alexander apologised this week after an independent report delivered a damning verdict on the conduct of the Scottish elections, claiming that voters were treated as...
& it's the way that you do it. And that's the problem when it comes to putting policies such as healthy eating into practice. Phil Swann identifies the obstacles
'Personalised public services' is the Brown government's latest Big Idea. But how are the ambitious plans for round-the-clock GP services, individual health budgets and one-to-one tutoring going to...
An ageing population presents a series of issues that must be addressed now, if millions of people are to have a decent old age. Rebecca George looks at the challenges ahead
