Ministers have quickly rejected key recommendations from Sir Michael Lyons' review of local government, including a revaluation of property prices and an end to capping.
MPs have described the NHS's workforce planning as a 'disastrous failure' after discovering that it exceeded the planned number of nurses by 340% between 1999 and 2004.
Local authorities and NHS trusts might be forced to reduce their carbon count through a mandatory emissions trading scheme, under legislation published this week.
Sir Michael Lyons this week denied that his proposed overhaul of town hall funding would initiate massive hikes in council taxes on expensive homes, and revealed that a long-term plan would accompany...
It no longer seems so much 'if' as 'when'. Bizarre, amazing, doomed call it what you will, but the Rev Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness look set to become first and deputy first ministers of...
The Parliamentary and health service Ombudsman has found the Department of Health guilty of 'maladministration' in its bungled attempts to correct an earlier error.
The cost of building and improving the country's major roads is accelerating faster than the average motorway driver, the National Audit Office said this week.
NHS staff in Scotland are to receive their entire 2.5% pay increase in April following a surprise decision that conflicts with the phased deal on offer to their counterparts in England and Wales.
The Department for Work and Pensions has tried to improve its call centres after a damning PAC report last year. But has it done enough? Justin Pugsley reports
Public sector managers are to be made more accountable for the advice they give to elected members, Tom McCabe, the Scottish finance minister, has disclosed.
The government's failure to produce comprehensive estimates of the full cost of London's 2012 Olympics is 'a recipe for an open-ended cheque book', an influential MP has warned.
GPs should be able to provide their patients with free social care services, even if their local authority has deemed them ineligible for such help, the Department of Health has said.
The prime minister and chancellor this week backed a radical welfare overhaul that will hand over responsibility for millions of long-term benefit claimants and billions in public cash to private...
Thousands of female civil servants are poised to launch equal pay claims following the failure of departments to address glaring disparities in salaries legal challenges that could cost the...
Ministers would set the education and community care budgets of every council in Scotland and take responsibility for managing these services under a radical plan drawn up by a leading civil servant.
The emergency use of police cells to tackle prison overcrowding equates to almost half of the Prison Service's spare capacity, the Home Office revealed this week.
Ministers must commit Whitehall departments to new joint Public Service Agreements if they are to tackle the growing gap between unemployment and skills in the North of England compared with the...
NHS watchers turning to the service's third-quarter financial report last week were bemused. Despite Department of Health claims that NHS finances were more transparent than ever, no fewer than three...
The government has shelved controversial plans to produce estimates of public sector productivity as part of an overhaul of national accounting, Public Finance has learnt.
Seventeen of the first 26 academy schools commissioned under the government's controversial programme overspent their agreed capital budgets, the public spending watchdog has revealed.
The NHS will improve on its 2005/06 deficit of £547m by just £110m, a Department of Health report has forecast, despite staff cutbacks and rationing of patient services.
A council heavily criticised in a watchdog report has become the first in Scotland to cut its council tax since local government was reorganised in 1996.
