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20 Jan 00
The governors of Pimlico School have called for an urgent meeting with ministers and demanded a public inquiry into the planned Private Finance Initiative scheme earmarked for the school.
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13 Jan 00
Future London mayors were warned this week not to exceed their powers by attempting to snatch responsibilities away from borough councils.
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13 Jan 00
Whether the outbreak of flu sweeping Britain is an epidemic is a moot point. Statistically, it isn't. The official figures for reported cases are little more than for January last year.
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13 Jan 00
The benefits system is still losing billions of pounds of public money due to fraud and inefficiency in spite of attempts to improve the service, the Commons Public Accounts Committee has found.
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13 Jan 00
University lecturers are complaining that inequalities in funding mean that the most disadvantaged students are getting the worst deal.
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13 Jan 00
Scottish finance minister Jack McConnell this week underlined the Scottish Executive's commitment to continuing with PFI and other public-private partnerships. But he added that the system was not...
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13 Jan 00
The Private Finance Initiative is expensive and inflexible and deflects from government priorities, a House of Commons Treasury committee was told this week.
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13 Jan 00
The chairman of an independent inquiry looking at the pattern of the school year has criticised the present system as 'medieval' and warned that 'the status quo is not an option'.
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6 Jan 00
Local education authorities that refuse to take bullying seriously could face increasing legal action from the victims, a leading teaching union has warned.
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6 Jan 00
Many so-called regeneration projects are, in effect, schemes to help manage the irreversible decline of neighbourhoods caused by low demand for social housing, according a study commissioned by the...
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6 Jan 00
The fate of the controversial Private Finance Initiative scheme at London's Pimlico school is likely to be resolved in the next two weeks after five years of acrimony.
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16 Dec 99
Hundreds of teaching jobs are at risk following the ending of Section 11 grants to local authorities. The grants are paid for teachers to help residents for whom English is a foreign language.
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16 Dec 99
Contractors bidding for Private Finance Initiative contracts in the health service face an extra round of competition following the introduction of long-awaited guidance by Health Secretary Alan...
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16 Dec 99
The Treasury has blocked key parts of a radical Whitehall reform programme drawn up by senior mandarins in a last-minute wrangle over cash.
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16 Dec 99
Schools minister Estelle Morris has conceded that the government is creating and promoting a market for the private sector to take over the running of failing schools.
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16 Dec 99
The government's drive to deliver public services via the Internet is being undermined by Whitehall's 'risk-averse' culture and its inability to respond to change quickly, the first major...
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9 Dec 99
Social housing rents would soar beyond the means of most tenants if they were based on the market value of properties, says a new survey.
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2 Dec 99
Labour has made £24m available for councils to meet the costs of audit and inspection under the Best Value regime that comes into force in April.
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25 Nov 99
Councils have accused the government of penalising them for innovation by denying them cash for policies which are later recommended and funded by the government.
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25 Nov 99
A rise of 7% has been forecast in council tax almost three times the rate of inflation in the next financial year, with householders facing an average £56 increase in their bills.
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25 Nov 99
The influential Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) at the Cabinet Office is to investigate which public services can be delivered electronically and to examine the respective roles of both the...
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25 Nov 99
The National Association of Head Teachers has accused local education authorities of undermining school self-management and creating a dependency culture because of the way they distribute grants to...
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18 Nov 99
Two senior government ministers have set out to find a cure for the plague of form-filling and local government is due to be one of the chief beneficiaries.
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18 Nov 99
An improvement agency covering the whole of the public sector in Scotland could be set up, following the publication next month of a report by the Best Value Taskforce.
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18 Nov 99
The Local Government Association has accused education minister Estelle Morris of 'scaremongering' after she warned that a further 15 local authorities might have their services privatised in a drive...