Business leaders could be directly elected to regional chambers under a proposal being considered by the government to widen the background of those determining regional policy at local level.
As the vague concept of Best Value turns into a full-blown audit and inspection regime, the reality of what awaits finance chiefs is finally being grasped. And they are not happy.
Well-off patients could have to pay £50 for a 20-minute consultation with a GP as part of a radical overhaul of primary care services, family doctors have predicted this week.
Local authorities breathed a sigh of relief this week as the government endorsed CIPFA's Best Value Accounting Code, accepting the argument that self-regulation is preferable to secondary legislation...
The introduction of directly elected city-region mayors whose responsibilities would cover a much wider territory than previously proposed is being considered by the government.
Government warnings to local authorities to keep down council tax rises may have been heeded. Early forecasts, based on counties' figures, suggest bills will rise by about 6% on average in line...
PricewaterhouseCoopers last week announced its intention to split its business operations into at least two divisions, recognising the complaints of conflicts of interest in the Big Five firms.
Auditors could be forced into making political decisions for which they are ill-equipped under the new Best Value regime, a House of Commons committee was told this week.
The government was this week accused of being the country's most wasteful landlord as new figures show that almost one in five public sector properties is empty.
The National Assembly for Wales has announced an extra £2m for children's services following a damning report that traced two decades of child abuse in local authority homes.
The government has been forced radically to revise its attempts to regenerate the regions after a damning report from its own Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) criticised Labour's approach as...
Cabinet secretary Sir Richard Wilson this week admitted there was scope for changing the way government departments are funded, and that they could even consider bidding for money from a central 'pot...
Housing associations have been promised lighter regulation and less bureaucracy as the Housing Corporation studies new ways to cope with the growing number of registered social landlords (RSLs).
A new video featuring ethnic minority civil servants will be taken into local communities to try to change Whitehall's 'all white' image, Cabinet Office minister Mo Mowlam announced this week.
The government has insisted that legislation creating directly elected mayors will still be law by the summer, despite this week's defeat in the House of Lords of part of the Local Government Bill.
Chris Woodhead, the chief inspector for schools, has warned that performance-related pay will have little real impact on teachers' earnings, because one in ten head teachers are incapable of...
French, Italian, Portuguese and Belgian environment ministers were gathering in Brussels this week to back calls for 'Car-Free Day 2000' to be extended across the European Union. The launch on...
Receipts on France's state-run Pari-Mutuel (PMU) horse race betting network are rising, which is good news for the French ministry of finance. The bad news is that the rise is only slight and the...
Ministers will lead a robust reaffirmation of government policy at Labour's Local Governance conference this weekend when they will tell local authorities in blunt terms to 'reform or die'.
National Health Service bed numbers came under renewed scrutiny this week. A spot check revealed that patients were waiting on trolleys much longer than the Department of Health's four-hour limit.
The NHS is failing to meet its New Deal target and there is evidence that a significant number of health service employers have yet to commit themselves to the initiative.
Conservatives in local government this week defended the sacking of John Redwood, one of the few high-profile members of William Hague's shadow cabinet, claiming he was part of the 'party's past'.
