Council tax payers in Scotland will have their bills frozen for a third successive year following budget plans announced by Finance Secretary John Swinney
Leaked government figures reveal that Treasury officials planned the ‘tightest squeeze’ on public services spending since Britain was bailed out by the International Monetary Fund in the 1970s,...
Savings of £50bn a year can be made through cutting ‘non-performing schemes’, ‘over-extended government’ and ‘cutting out the middleman’, according to a report out today
Public sector unions are gearing up to face
the prospect of inevitable spending cuts after the general election. Next week’s TUC conference will indicate how far they will go
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has challenged governments to invest in education to ensure an effective recovery from the global recession
Traditional capital funding methods are proving risky. So why shouldn't local authorities be able to adopt the US model of municipal bonds, asks Chris Leslie
The new Forth Crossing will be built regardless of whether Scotland is given borrowing powers by Westminster, the Scottish Government announced as part of its Legislative Programme today
Right-to-buy and other sales of housing by social landlords have plummeted since the recession, according to the annual study by the Department for Communities and Local Government
A think-tank has called on the government to set up a permanent bank to finance infrastructure projects to beef up the Treasury’s arm’s-length lending unit.
All 12 local councils in Surrey have protested against the government’s capping of the police authority budget and the requirement to rebill their residents
The government has dismissed as ‘misleading’ claims that it will have to pay almost £300m in fines to the European Union because of financial irregularities in regeneration projects
Local authorities’ borrowing from the government has fallen by more than a third in one year, while deposits with the Treasury’s Debt Management Office are rocketing after the Icelandic banking fiasco
The Audit Commission has warned that unemployment could remain high for three years after the end of the recession despite positive initiatives from council leaders to mitigate the effects of the...
The Private Finance Initiative was thought to be in trouble earlier on in the recession. But it has proved resilient to new accounting standards, and the banks' credit margins on projects have soared...
Opposition parties have accused the Scottish Government of ‘financial incompetence’ and ‘fantasy finance’ after Finance Secretary John Swinney set out his case for a North Sea oil fund for the...
