Health Secretary Alan Milburn ushered Best Value into the NHS last week, abandoning almost two decades of compulsory market testing in support services such as cleaning and catering.
A supervision and surveillance scheme designed to curb the country's worst young offenders will do little to reduce youth crime, probation officers warned this week.
Local authorities are gearing up for annual spending spats with schools after the government backed down on its threat for direct education funding in this week's finance green paper.
Dot.com companies could soon be processing passport applications, driving licences and even benefits under plans to allow the private and voluntary sectors to deliver on-line government services.
The Local Government Association joined this week's manifesto frenzy in an attempt to halt the government's drive to marginalise councils in the run-up to the General Election.
The public sector has a serious image problem which is discouraging young people from seeing it as a worthwhile career and creating a recruitment crisis, according to the chief executive of the King'...
Local government leaders are savouring a small but significant victory in their long-running turf war with Westminster over control of frontline services.
Leader of the Commons Margaret Beckett has rejected claims that the government manipulates the selection of MPs for select committee posts to ensure minimum opposition from backbenchers.
The government's vision of town halls delivering services to the public via the Internet and digital TV will fail without further funding, local government leaders have warned.
The Local Government Association's Labour group has won approval for a series of key policy amendments from Labour's National Policy Forum (NPF). The amendments were put forward to the NPF, which was...
The government must adequately fund the proposed 'right to roam' network or local authorities face a crippling financial burden, the Liberal Democrats have warned.
The Blair government's determination to downgrade local authorities in favour of control from Whitehall has been likened to Soviet-style centralist rule by the leader of the Local Government...
The waves of modernisation sweeping through local government are producing far-reaching changes in the way authorities provide services and do business with their partners in the private and...
Ken Livingstone has called for the 33 London boroughs to be abolished and replaced with 14 or 15 larger authorities with increased responsibilities, including control of health and transport.
In a move designed to boost public confidence in figures published by the government, an independent Statistics Commission, appointed by Chancellor Gordon Brown, has been set up to scrutinise the...
The government looks set to provoke a row with a powerful group of doctors in the run-up to the next General Election by suggesting hospital consultants' private practices should be reined in.
Politics is a cyclical game. Representatives of the party in power at Westminster are always liable to be told to get on their bikes at mid-term local elections.
The government has come under renewed attack over transport spending with the Confederation of British Industry demanding a £209bn package for improving roads, rail and airport systems.
Police complaints about spending too much time filling in forms and not enough time catching criminals have finally found a sympathetic ear in the shape of Cabinet Office supremo Mo Mowlam.
Labour reaffirmed its faith in the Private Finance Initiative this week when local government minister Hilary Armstrong unveiled 14 new schemes, totalling £300m.
