Birmingham City Council is set for a £49m overspend in the current financial year and faces “a mammoth task” to balance its 2017-18 budget, the latest report from the improvement panel overseeing the...
Three health charities have said that plugging a £1.9bn social care funding gap is a more urgent priority than boosting funding for the NHS in this month’s Autumn Statement.
Facts and figures from the November 2016 edition of Public Finance magazine on grammar schools, public trust in government and local government investments
A blueprint for Welsh councils reform, which will set out more details of plans to pool some services at regional level, will be published early next year, Welsh local government secretary Mark...
The government has called on councils and other public sector bodies to join the Cabinet Office’s National Fraud Initiative after a review found it had saved almost £200m in two years.
MSPs have approved a Scottish Government order to increase the council tax for Scotland’s wealthiest households, but only after delivering a rebuke to ministers for failing to replace the tax with a...
Funding and responsibility for the government’s flagship back to work scheme should be devolved to councils to allow support to be better tailored to local needs, the Local Government Association has...
Councils are broadly positive about the potential for community asset transfers, but more needs to be done to turn this enthusiasm into action, research has found.
Creating 27 unitary councils across the whole of England could save as much as £2.9bn, according to an independent analysis of local government reorganisation options undertaken for the County...
Around two-thirds of people think a greater share of the total health budget should be spent on adult social care services, according to a poll by the Local Government Association.
County and district finance chiefs are to meet later this month to consider a potential change to the split in business rates revenue once the tax is fully localised to local government.
Poor record-keeping means that some Scottish councils pay for the upkeep of property they don’t own, according to the official in charge of the Scottish Land Register.
Combined authority mayors being elected next May will have only three years to demonstrate their effectiveness before they face re-election – or possibly even abolition
The Public Accounts Committee has a vital role in providing parliamentary oversight of government spending and public services but its work is changing in response to devolution. There is a need for...
Up to a quarter of hospital patients could be better cared for in their homes if council social services had the money to do this, the Local Government Association has said.
County and metropolitan councils have been the biggest losers from the switch away from grants to 50% local business rates retention, according to Institute for Fiscal Studies research for the Local...
Unison has warned the government that it would be acting unlawfully if it pressed the eight new Local Government Pension Scheme bodies to invest in infrastructure.
The government’s Troubled Families programme shows how payment by result contracts can go wrong. But it also shows where they can be improved if public bodies become more specific on what they are...
The UK Green Investment Bank has loaned £10.2m to Kent County Council to support its £40m programme to replace streetlights with energy efficient LED lights.
Prison and probation services are failing to protect the public from reoffending and should be devolved in England and Wales, the RSA think-tank has said.
