Prime Minister Tony Blair this week confirmed Sir Gus O'Donnell as the new Cabinet secretary, ending speculation that the job would be offered to a surprise candidate.
Budget-holders in education are concerned that procurement targets will oblige them to axe their trusted suppliers. However, both sides of the equation will be involved in solving the efficiency...
Slowly but surely, the private sector is making inroads into the NHS, with the active help of the government. While there is no prospect of full-scale privatisation, mixed provision of health care...
Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt will come under pressure to put together a financial rescue package for the NHS in Norfolk after government auditors confirmed that the local trust is paying over the...
Ministers are using populist language to justify their hardline response to antisocial behaviour while largely overlooking measures to tackle its causes, says a major study by King's College, London...
Nurses who withhold a comforting hand; schools that stop children playing outside; community hospitals that ban home-made cakes at a party. The risk-averse culture has gone far too far, argues Julia...
The next president of CIPFA is a chief executive who balances enthusiasm for her adopted town with a determination to enjoy life to the full. Mike Thatcher reports
Everyone from the Lonely Planet tourist guides to think-tank boffins agree that Britain's city centres now beat anything on offer in Europe. What is responsible for this transformation, asks Will...
The catering workforce in schools needs to be massively expanded if schoolchildren are to be given healthy and nutritious meals, Unison said this week.
The government has pledged to help councils manage extra costs incurred by a decision to reverse reforms to the local government pension scheme, Public Finance has learned.
Construction costs on the government's £25bn schools infrastructure programme could easily be cut to release more than £200m for frontline services, James Stewart has told Public Finance.
Wendy Thomson, the prime minister's principal adviser on public service reform, is to return to her native Canada to take up a professorship at McGill University in Montreal
The chair of the Charity Commission turned down Rada for a career in social policy. But the theatre's loss has been the voluntary sector's gain, writes Vivienne Russell
The government is in a flap about 'respect', or the lack of it as personified by gangs of feral youths wearing 'hoodies'. Is this a real problem or just society having one of its moral panics and,...
Unison has called on Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt to take urgent steps to combat violence against staff, patients and visitors in mental health inpatient units.
Britain is the only major democracy whose ministries have no constitutional basis. This allows prime ministers to chop and change them at will, often in response to political power plays. It has to...
The general election brought home to the government the country's desire for a return to local democracy. The LGA calls for this to be made a reality and its chair, Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart,...
