Councils in England will face an average cut in spending power of 1.8% in 2015/16, local government minister Kris Hopkins has announced, but London boroughs and urban authorities will face larger...
Cities should be given greater financial incentives to tackle poverty by being allowed to retain more of the savings made from cutting unemployment, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has said.
The government’s flagship Universal Credit welfare reform has begun to accept claims from families as part of the phased rollout of the controversial scheme to create a single benefit from six...
The government has succeeded in cutting spending on civil legal aid following reforms to provision, but it is not clear whether the changes have also been effective in targeting support to those who...
Government changes to benefits and tax credits, intended to save nearly £20bn in the current financial year, have produced only £2.5bn in cash savings, an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies...
The number unemployed people in the UK fell by 115,000 to 1.96 million over the three months to September taking the unemloyment rate to 6%, according to the Office of National Statistics.
The government’s flagship Work Programme has not been successful in helping hard-to-help jobseekers into work, a report by the Public Accounts Committee has found.
The Greater Manchester Combined Authority is to be led by a directly elected mayor under plans to devolve a host of powers to the city region, Chancellor George Osborne has announced today.
Spending across the range of benefits included in the upcoming welfare cap is expected to fall as a percentage of the economy to 2018/19, an analysis from the Office for Budget Responsibility has...
UK workers should have to pay into a new unemployment insurance scheme to ensure that welfare provision is based on taxpayer contributions, the think-tank Policy Exchange has said.
Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney has announced the first Scottish taxes in more than 300 years in his 2015/16 Budget package in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood.
Schools watchdog Ofsted has today set out plans for a radical overhaul in the way it judges standards in England in changes that will see good schools given less thorough examinations.
Welfare spending cuts mean that three-quarters of councils will have to scrap or significantly reduce support schemes for vulnerable people from next April, the Local Government Association has...
Chancellor George Osborne has set out plans to freeze the value of most benefits for two years from April 2016 as part of an extra £25bn worth of cuts needed to balance public spending.
Shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna has said that proposals to increase the minimum wage to £8 an hour will form part of the next Labour government’s ‘driving purpose’ to tackle levels of low pay...
Shadow chancellor Ed Balls has said the next Labour government would extend the coalition’s below-inflation annual increases in Child Benefit, meaning that the value of the payment would likely fall...
A programme to support troubled families has been expanded to help vulnerable younger children get a better start in life, the government announced today.
A simplified state pension will abolish ‘outdated inequalities and create a fairer society’, pensions minister Steve Webb said, marking 600 days until the start of the new system.
The number of sanctions placed on people receiving Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) quadrupled between the first quarters of 2013 and 2014, government figures have revealed.