Town hall leaders are warning that the £1bn cash injection promised by Gordon Brown does nothing to tackle the underlying pressures on council tax bills, which could still soar in future years.
Chancellor Gordon Brown was accused this week of using accounting tricks to inflate his civil service relocation figures by including posts moved before Sir Michael Lyons' proposals for Whitehall...
NHS foundation trusts are lobbying ministers to be allowed to bid for the next wave of private sector health care contracts, the Healthcare Financial Management Association conference heard last week.
Ministers will give councils extra financial support but will couple it with widespread capping to avoid big council tax increases in an election year, local government insiders believe.
Housing minister Keith Hill this week responded to private sector calls to boost the lethargic social housing Private Finance Initiative market with a programme to help tenants 'get better homes...
Councils need to focus on building up effective relationships with their partners as 'new localism' plans move forward over the next few months, according to the Improvement and Development Agency.
Senior public sector figures have spelled out their disappointment with the government after this year's Queen's Speech failed to outline an overarching vision for the future of public services.
Local authorities across the country are to be given powers already available in London to remove and destroy abandoned vehicles dumped in back streets.
Small companies are missing out on billions of pounds in public sector business each year because of the widespread myth that only large firms can deliver best value, their representative body claims...
The government should use next week's Queen's Speech to introduce legislation to halve the £730m councils spend on inspection and regulation, council leaders are urging.
London Mayor Ken Livingstone has vetoed for a second time a £1bn plan to build a giant, privately-financed hospital in the capital's East End, leaving the project behind schedule and exposed to...
Whitehall's inadequate risk management and squandering of civil servants' vital commercial skills are hobbling government efforts to boost the value for money of public services, according to the...
In the wake of the biggest civil service strike for ten years, the leader of the Public and Commercial Services union has accused the government of turning the civil service into a 'political...
Ministers have called for better co-operation between Local Strategic Partnerships and community groups after government auditors identified tensions that were impeding progress.
Doubts have been raised over the popularity of council-owned housing companies after a London borough ditched its proposals in favour of prudential borrowing.
The Local Government Association is preparing to slash funding to its central bodies by 4.1% next year in advance of what is expected to be a tight finance settlement in November.
The explicit efficiency targets for local government, set out in Sir Peter Gershon's review, are to be relaxed in favour of a more 'flexible' approach to meeting the overall £6.45bn figure, Public...
The First Division Association has warned the government that it must be able to justify the increased use of private consultants, after figures revealed spending of £1.75bn a year.
Business leaders have rounded on the Commons' Public Accounts Committee for its 'blame culture' after it again criticised civil servants for not managing relationships with suppliers more effectively...
When Adair Turner published his interim report on the UK's escalating pension crisis last week, he no doubt sent civil servants at the Department for Work and Pensions scuttling back to their offices...
