The government's regional growth programme has received a boost with renewed backing from the prime minister, private sector endorsement and more cash to pay for research
Some 200,000 council jobs will be lost in England in 2011, with the bulk of redundancies taking place before the end of the current financial year, a union has warned
Ministers have urged councils to do more to promote the use of electric cars, and have taken away local authorities’ powers to decide where charging points can be installed.
Councils are to be allocated an extra £162m in the current financial year to spend on social care, as a result of cost-cutting at the Department of Health.
Tony Redmond, former chair of the Commission for Local Administration in England and local government ombudsman, has been knighted in the latest round of honours
New jobs in the public sector hit a record low last month, at less than half the level recorded in December 2009, latest figures show. But demand for qualified accountants continues to rise.
Ministers robustly defended their decision to frontload cuts to local authority budgets today, claiming the move would kick start organisational reform.
Bureaucracy in the planning system is to be dramatically cut back and replaced with a new set of rules designed to stimulate growth and hand more power to ‘communities’, the government has announced.
Councils have called on the government to do more to reduce the burden of data submissions to Whitehall after ministers issued proposals for a newly pared-down reporting regime.
