There's much to please local authorities in the white paper, particularly in terms of deregulation and decentralisation. But real devolution, letting councils decide local priorities, is still a long...
Town hall leaders are demanding that devolution must underpin the Bills of the next parliamentary session, as the prime minister used the last Queen's Speech of his tenure to outline a far-reaching...
Launching the report of his inquiry into local government finance in Scotland, Sir Peter Burt the current chair of ITV repeated several times what he saw as a main attraction of his proposed new...
Far from being on its way out, the Private Finance Initiative has never been in ruder health. As well as strengthening its role in health and education, it is elbowing its way into new areas such as...
Wales was always bound to go its own distinctive way on the issue of public service reform. Now, as the Welsh Assembly Government prepares to respond to his review, Sir Jeremy Beecham explains why
Town halls this week set out their wish list for economic devolution within the context of the sector's white paper urging ministers to establish new funding streams for sub-regional transport,...
Local authorities should be placed under a statutory duty to guarantee the environmental sustainability of their areas for future generations, leading green campaigners said this week.
A surge in new medical treatments combined with an ageing population mean the demands on the NHS are set to rise just as it faces a financial squeeze. A co-payments system, with built-in protection...
In many ways, the NHS has never had it so good. But that's not what the public thinks. Public Finance and Deloitte convened a round table of health service policy makers and practitioners to explore...
The Treasury will shortly publish strategies for policy and growth that will set it on a collision course with Prime Minister Tony Blair's Whitehall-wide reviews announced last week.
English cities should be empowered to drive forward their own economic plans, with greater control over transport, planning and skills, according to government-commissioned research.
The Crown Prosecution Service needs to start emulating the most successful private law firms if taxpayers are to be guaranteed value for money, senior MPs said this week.
Claims that English schools are failing almost 1 million pupils are misleading, damaging and a 'gross simplification' of the reality of education, teaching leaders said this week.
Whitehall's autonomous agency model came under fire this week when auditors blamed a massive failure in European Union payments to farmers on senior civil servants' reluctance to challenge the body...
Where there are targets, there must be statistics. Where there are statistics, there must be politics, and where there is politics, there must be public distrust. The ONS must try to find a way out...
As the NHS's financial crisis continues, the Private Finance Initiative has come in for its share of the blame. But this is wrong, argue Phil Lobb and Tom Startup. In fact, with a more flexible...
Salaries for Whitehall directors rose by 7.4% last year almost twice the rate as for the rest of the UK's workforce. But some executives have been rewarded despite poor performances, critics have...
Whitehall's largest trade union this week raised fears that skilled government IT jobs could shortly be transferred abroad, after a leading contractor announced compulsory redundancies.
New nuclear reactors the clean, green answer to the UK's growing energy problems, or expensive, hazardous white elephants? The government appears to have made its mind up, and is rewriting local...
