Ministers are seeking ways to reduce ring-fencing of public service funding as documents to be released with next month’s Pre-Budget Report reveal a tangled web of funding streams
The UK public sector is being cheated out of an estimated £27bn a year, and must tackle the problem to safeguard jobs and services, a leading fraud expert has said
Despite three batches of ‘quantitative easing’, the UK economy is continuing to contract. So will the latest cash injection finally save the day? David Williams examines the evidence
Scotland’s Finance Minister has told Chancellor Alistair Darling that more capital spending must be brought forward if the country is to survive the continuing recession
Councils are still not being given reliable financial advice more than a year after the Icelandic banking collapse, according to the Commons communities and local government select committee
Northeast England councils striving to meet centrally set targets are unable to address the economic and social problems of the region, a
think-tank has found
Much is expected of the Total Place initiative – ministers are hoping it will join up services while producing huge savings. Guy Clifton warns, however, that the consequences have not been properly...
The scale of the public sector deficit demands no-holds-barred solutions. So could Total Place – the latest weapon in the government’s armoury – help to lower costs without damaging vital services?...
Public spending restrictions are likely to increase the amount of social housing that still fails the decent homes standard at the end of next year, MPs were told this week
A spate of job losses and a squeeze on pay and conditions have been stoking unrest across the public sector, ahead of the clampdown on spending expected in November’s Pre-Budget Report
NHS leaders have warned that the government might seek to squeeze health service spending by locking down the treatments price tariff for five years and clawing back surpluses
Conservative proposals to abandon the government’s Flexible New Deal jobs programme and replace it with an untried alternative are irresponsible, Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper has said
The main parties’ health spokesmen took centre stage during the conference season. But as we head towards an election, they will need to spell out how to maintain quality while making necessary...
Economists have predicted that only ‘extreme’ options could fill the huge hole in the public finances, such as a 7p income tax hike, a five-year public sector pay freeze and savage service cuts
Forget the bonfire of the quangos, it’s managers and back-office staff who are in politicians’
line of fire now. But can layers of ‘bureaucrats’ really be taken out without harming services
on the...
