Scotland’s Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs) remain inconsistent in their leadership, collaboration and scrutiny, unclear in their ambitions and uneven in their supervision, according to Audit...
Councils should be able to borrow from the Public Works Loan Board to fund revenue spending on projects to integrate local services, an independent expert panel has recommended.
Councils have borne the brunt of the coalition’s public spending cuts, and lost nearly half their core funding in five years. Torn between raising council tax and losing their ‘freeze...
Housing and planning minister Brandon Lewis today called on councils to prioritise development of brownfield land so that more homes can be built while protecting the countryside.
Commissioning for children’s services should be transformed to ensure services are joined up and meet long-term needs, an expert report has recommended.
A parliamentary inquiry into the effectiveness of scrutiny arrangements in councils run by cabinets or mayors is needed after a number of high-profile failings, a senior MP has said.
Councils have been slow to ‘face up to their responsibilities’ on child sexual exploitation, Ofsted has warned today in its first examination of the issue.
The Department for Communities and Local Government must improve efforts to monitor the effect of councils’ funding cuts on the ground, the National Audit Office has said.
The next government needs to better coordinate economic development initiatives if it hopes to close the current North-South divide, a committee of MPs and peers has said.
Members of all three local government unions have voted to accept a two-year pay deal from the Local Government Association, resolving a dispute that had seen workers take strike action.
The economic potential of England’s counties, towns and small cities is just as important as that of big cities, and they should get devolved powers too, says an independent commission.
Councils should be given the right to set business rates and retain any growth in income, while Whitehall should lose its current redistribution powers, the Local Government Association has said.
Early plans to integrate local health and social care services through the Better Care Fund are ‘inadequate’ and fail to match the scale of its ambition, the National Audit Office warned today.
Withdrawal of Council Tax Benefit has resulted in a postcode lottery for households that can’t pay part of the bill. Local authorities are also feeling the effects, with arrears on the increase
What does CIPFA want from the political parties come May 2015? Some honesty about the fiscal position, for starters – and realism about the hard choices to be made
Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles is to send three commissioners into Tower Hamlets to oversee the work of the authority after an inspection by PricewaterhouseCoopers found it had failed to...
The Greater Manchester Combined Authority is to be led by a directly elected mayor under plans to devolve a host of powers to the city region, Chancellor George Osborne has announced today.
Care minister Norman Lamb has revealed that an expanded version of the government’s flagship Better Care Fund will be the likely mechanism to fully integrate health and care spending across the...
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced that nearly all of the 151 Better Care Fund plans in England have been approved ahead of implementation of the reform from next April.
