Years of financial mismanagement and political chaos have earned the London Borough of Hackney the dubious distinction of being the first local authority to face a central government takeover.
The government's £2bn New Deal for Communities programme is helping to cut crime rates and boost the local economy in some areas, the first annual review has shown.
Ministers' attempts to convince unions that the public sector is safe in government hands failed this week when plans to give extra rights to state employed staff who switch to the private sector...
Prime Minister Tony Blair's e-government targets are looking increasingly shaky as councils struggle to put together plans and industry experts call for a more realistic timescale.
An unnamed district council has been fined £28,050 for more than 1,000 breaches of the Pensions Act in relation to information provided to local government pension scheme members.
Public sector workers have emerged as the winners in a survey scrutinising the ethical investment policies of the 100 largest occupational pension schemes.
In what has been described as a 'near revolutionary' step, the government has reopened the debate on the unfunded police and fire pension schemes and raised the possibility of meeting pension costs...
Pensioners, fishermen and schoolchildren in the Berkshire borough of Bracknell Forest will soon be able to access council services through a single smart card.
Twenty-seven councils have been given the green light to sell off swathes of their housing stock as the government renewed its commitment last week to the large-scale transfer of council housing to...
Tough decisions will have to be made and substantial sums of taxpayers' money will be needed if the UK is to have a 'bigger, better, safer railway', according to the Strategic Rail Authority.
The government intends to give the private sector fixed-term contracts to manage schools and more 'sponsorship opportunities' under a legislative programme designed to place more pressure on public...
Middlesbrough Council has entered into a £260m public-private partnership with Hyder Business Services, the biggest deal of its kind in Northeast England.
The London Borough of Brent has become one of the first councils to allow staff transferred under outsourcing deals to retrieve their local government pension with backdated benefits.
Ideological differences between the main political parties on how to improve public services emerged this week as the general election campaign finally got under way.
Twenty-two of the poorest neighbourhoods in England have secured a total of more than £1bn in central government regeneration funding over the next ten years.
The Treasury has saved £6.5bn on the housing benefit bill since 1996 because of restrictions on claims introduced by the last government, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
GPs are angry that much is evident. The actions of those who on May Day closed their surgeries to all but emergency cases led family doctors to be mentioned in the same breath as the militant anti-...
The government's anticipated £1bn profit from the restructured Channel Tunnel rail link project has been called into question by the National Audit Office.
A picture of departmental conflict and policy incoherence emerges in last week's report on waste management from the Commons' environment select committee. The result, it implies, is that local...
The Liberal Democrats are once again relying on a pledge to add 1p to the basic rate of income tax to woo voters, promising to fund improvements in education and bridge the Budget deficit they claim...
