Environment

  • Public Finance
    27 Jan 00
    A House of Commons select committee is expected to recommend a merger of the Inland Revenue and Customs & Excise in an attempt to streamline both organisations.
  • Public Finance
    27 Jan 00
    National park authorities are angry over the government's failure to fund their Best Value audit costs.
  • Public Finance
    27 Jan 00
    Three executive agencies have been forced to take urgent action to improve their services as a result of a critical report from the Public Services Productivity Panel.
  • Public Finance
    20 Jan 00
    Effective community strategies will be at the heart of achieving Best Value in housing, local authorities were told this week.
  • Public Finance
    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.
  • Public Finance
    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.
  • Public Finance
    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'.
  • Public Finance
    16 Dec 99
    Britain's largest council, Birmingham City, this week elected an all-Labour Cabinet team as political reforms at the authority gathered pace.
  • Public Finance
    16 Dec 99
    Local authorities will have to bear an increasing amount of the cost of Best Value inspection, which could rise to more than £50m a year.
  • Public Finance
    16 Dec 99
    Scottish Homes is being turned into an agency of the Scottish Executive in a move to bring together the rights of tenants living in council and housing association properties.
  • Public Finance
    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.
  • Public Finance
    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.
  • Public Finance
    9 Dec 99
    Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott is under pressure from within Whitehall to rethink plans to sell a majority stake in Britain's air traffic control system.
  • Public Finance
    2 Dec 99
    League tables could be introduced across the criminal justice system after a critical National Audit Office study found up to £84m could be saved by eliminating waste and spreading good practice.
  • Public Finance
    2 Dec 99
    The National Audit Office should be granted greater powers to inspect private companies undertaking public sector contracts, the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, David Davis MP, said last...
  • Public Finance
    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.
  • Public Finance
    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.
  • Public Finance
    25 Nov 99
    Directly elected mayors for major cities in England and Wales could be in place as early as spring 2001 as the government this week signalled it wanted to speed legislation through parliament.
  • Public Finance
    25 Nov 99
    The Treasury is to more than double the number of cross-government spending programmes but has played down claims that this is an assault on the financial independence of individual Whitehall...
  • Public Finance
    18 Nov 99
    The government will put local government political reorganisation on the fast track next week when it publishes the bill that will pave the way for directly elected mayors.
  • Public Finance
    18 Nov 99
    The new team to promote the Private Finance Initiative will help councils overcome any skill shortages that may stop them pressing ahead with schemes, finance directors have been told.
  • Public Finance
    18 Nov 99
    Housing associations in London have been accused of 'ghettoising the poor' by allocating most of their homes to the unemployed.
  • Public Finance
    11 Nov 99
    Home Secretary Jack Straw has been forced to go back to the drawing board after it emerged that his draft Freedom of Information Bill contravened international agreements on the environment.
  • Public Finance
    11 Nov 99
    Housing associations are being given more freedom to spend grants which were initially tied up in properties that are disposed of or sold.
  • Public Finance
    11 Nov 99
    A simplification of the statutory capital controls framework for local authorities is needed, according to CIPFA.

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