The government is to investigate the scale and nature of the private sector's role in delivering public services, as figures revealed that they now provide £44bn worth.
Senior backbench MPs are calling on ministers to introduce independent audits of public service quality to ensure it does not suffer from the 'stretching and highly ambitious' efficiency targets set...
Urban fire authorities this week warned that national 'resilience capability' could be diminished unless ministers agree to freeze changes which would cut £30m from their budgets.
Love it or loathe it, the PFI has been a part of the public sector for more than a decade. But with changes in government policies and in its accounting treatment, what future, if any, does it have...
Councils can drive down costs and improve the quality of their services by increasing their use of competition and market mechanisms, according to the Audit Commission.
The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills is one half of the most challenging education upheaval yet. Will it provide firm foundations for further and higher education and boost the UK...
A report this month showed that councils are still dragging their feet when it comes to trading and charging. Even the government is getting exasperated at their refusal to make the most of their...
There are big ambitions for the Comprehensive Area Assessment: for it to judge how well councils are serving their communities, and for it to be a more nimble form of inspection than its predecessor...
The PFI has proved its worth in many projects, large and small, but it is not the only funding game in town particularly when flexibility is needed. Nick Prior explains
English councils outside the capital are set to clash with their London counterparts as local authorities scrabble for resources in a tight fiscal climate.
When the winners of the first phase of the Department for Work and Pensions' Pathways to Work contracts were announced in September, the sense of disappointment among voluntary organisations was...
A flagship government policy aimed at encouraging GPs to shape local NHS services through a beefed-up commissioning role is struggling to take off, the Audit Commission has found.
Star ratings could give way to a traffic-light system of inspection, it emerged this week as public service watchdogs set out proposals for a radical revamp of the local inspection regime.
Whitehall departments are undermining devolution to town halls by attempting to introduce surreptitious targets for local services despite government promises to slash central diktats.
Welsh local authorities have a tough housing standard to meet and only one real way of paying for it: transferring their stock to an RSL. It's not a popular policy, especially for councils whose...
Despite the rhetoric, the public sector is still handcuffed by bureaucracy and targets. A better solution is performance contracting, which has worked in prisons and has the power to bring creativity...
From public sector productivity to migration, official statistics have rarely been so hotly contested. Tony Travers analyses the reasons for the party-political punch-ups
