A Public Accounts Committee attack on the management of Private Finance Initiative projects has sparked more opposition to the schemes from unions and doctors' leaders.
Will the new diplomas keep more young people at school and improve general skills levels or will their jack-of-all-trades nature prove unpopular with students, schools and employers?
More and more civil servants now operate at arm's length from Whitehall as part of agencies. But there are suggestions that a Tory government might reverse this trend and attempt a 'radical...
Margaret Eaton, the frontrunner in the race to become the Local Government Association's new chair, will pick her battles with ministers, but has pledged to be 'aggressively forthright' if necessary.
The Scottish Government is to publish a national plan to improve services for the terminally ill, following an Audit Scotland report that calls for a more consistent approach to palliative care.
Targets get a bad press. When the subject comes up on the Today programme, John Humphrys can barely suppress a snarl. Hardly a day goes by without some professional body or senior public official...
Plans to replace 46 local fire control rooms with nine regional centres will cost more than double the government's estimates and almost nine times as much as first planned, the firefighters' union...
Legal services provided to health bodies in Northern Ireland are being brought in-house as part of the fallout from a massive fraud committed by a firm of solicitors against the Department of Health...
Voluntary organisations can get to people and places that other service providers struggle to reach. Or can they? The government thinks so but the public administration select committee is not so...
You might be fighting fit and at the top of your game, but if you're 65 you can be forced out of your job. This could all change after a spate of age discrimination claims and a European Court...
Action taken by local, regional and devolved administrations on climate change is encouraging, but efforts are hampered by contradictions in cross-government policy, MPs have said.
The Labour Party has signalled encouragement for councils to build more homes and a central role for directly employed staff in public service delivery.
The Office for National Statistics has been forced to abandon its flagship Odyssey modernisation programme, admitting that planned changes to the national accounts and household surveys will take...
Public finance and chief council officers have warned that the Scottish Government's plans for a local income tax would create a funding gap of £742m, partially remove fiscal autonomy from local...
he green paper on police service reform proposes to include directly elected local representatives on police authorities. But will they have enough clout, asks Rick Muir
A revision of the sustainable investment rule to allow extra borrowing may diminish New Labour's claims to fiscal responsibility but given the current debt burden, it may be the lesser of two evils
Criticisms of lack of evidence about the third sector's role in public services are misplaced, says Stephen Bubb. The root of the problem is poor commissioning
Health minister Ivan Lewis has announced the 25 local authority schemes that will share the £80m Extra Care Housing Fund for 2008-2011. The fund is paid to councils to help them provide specialised...
Public service reform is entering a new era, with tailor-made budgets geared to the needs of individuals and putting users in control. Sophie Moullin reports