Essex County Council has authorised its Cabinet to sign off an outsourcing deal with IBM that could be worth up to £5.4bn – but public documents do not outline either the scope or likely price of the...
Robotic pets that double as fire, gas and flood alarms could form part of the next generation of measures used by councils to care for elderly people in their own homes
Councils have recommended a comprehensive shake-up of services for young people not in education, employment or training, dismissing existing provision as ‘bedevilled’ by bureaucracy
Forget the bonfire of the quangos, it’s managers and back-office staff who are in politicians’
line of fire now. But can layers of ‘bureaucrats’ really be taken out without harming services
on the...
Local government should be in the vanguard of public service reform and can look forward to enhanced freedoms and flexibilities to provide it, Communities Secretary John Denham has said
Local authorities are stepping up pressure on ministers to write off £18bn of historic debt as part of a major shake-up of housing finance.
More than 30 councils from the Campaign for Fair and Local...
Councils in Scotland must carry out more market-testing to demonstrate they are providing value for money, according to a local government spending watchdog
Leadership skills will be vital for public sector managers in the difficult days ahead. They
will have to review structures, manage their staff more effectively and communicate a
vision. Jody...
The collapse of Iceland’s banks forced a rethink of local authority investment strategies. A year on, many councils are putting safety before returns, others are still skating on the edge and...
Schools and local authorities have been accused of disregarding safety after a report found that fewer than 500 of the UK’s 32,000 schools have sprinkler systems to combat fires
A one-year public sector pay freeze, as proposed by shadow chancellor George Osborne this week, risks widening the gap between public and private sector salaries, an employment expert has warned
Scotland’s local authority spending watchdog is to press ahead with its revised performance assessment regime after a majority of councils backed the changes
Birmingham social services department used ‘inexperienced staff with insufficient management oversight’ who did not meet the needs of the children in its care, a report has found
