David Rowland, the permanent secretary at the Department for Transport, has been asked by the Treasury to co-ordinate Whitehall's latest attempt at a multi-billion pound savings drive through shared...
The government hates it and wants to avoid it at all costs. But there's no getting away from local party politics in a representative democracy, argue George Jones and John Stewart. It needs to be...
City-regions offer a new take on local democracy, holding out the idea of governance that reflects the urban economic realities. But these will only work if the hinterland is also involved in...
Most local authorities want to make the most of their community powers and include social and environmental benefits in the contracts they award. But procurement law can be problematic
Not for Scotland the path well trodden. While Westminster endorses market-based public service reforms, the Scottish Executive is ploughing its own furrow on education, health and immigration. Iain...
Ministers have secured sufficient support to see the education Bill over its first parliamentary hurdle but further battles are likely, education experts predict.
Serious failings in the management and control of a public sector joint venture, which led to substantial financial losses, have been revealed in a report from the auditor general for Northern...
The Department of Trade and Industry's Women and Work Commission has urged the government to consider seriously allowing class actions in equal pay cases.
City regions such as Birmingham and Greater Manchester should be given control of their own regeneration budgets and granted tax-raising powers, according to a report published by the Institute for...
Almost a year to the day after Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott caved into pressure on pension rights, local government union members are once again being balloted for strike action on the issue.
NHS health boards in Scotland are to receive an above-inflation average funding increase of 7.25%, bringing their allocation to £6.5bn, Health Minister Andy Kerr announced this week.
Scottish council chief executives and senior officials face new laws to make them directly accountable for their decisions and to hold them responsible for poor advice.
Social mobility has stalled, despite the government's best efforts to raise the aspirations of children from working-class homes. Effective reform of local services will be crucial to turning this...
Everyone agrees that the council tax is regressive but there's less consensus on the solution. The interim Lyons report plumped for reforming the benefit system and not the bands. But both are...
The government needs to put its house in order over how it approaches its much-publicised efficiency drive or it may find that the result is to make the public sector even less effective than it was...
Town halls are on course for average council tax increases of 4% well within the government's 5% capping threshold but still ahead of the rate of inflation.
Labour's plans for more housing depend on developers paying for the accompanying infrastructure with a new planning gain supplement. But there is opposition to this tax on building, as Mark Smulian...
When the National Audit Office investigated Whitehall's efficiency savings it found that they weren't all they seemed. Some were aspirational, some weren't efficient and others couldn't be proved....
The Private Finance Initiative has never been a free lunch for the NHS. Now even the Treasury seems to be losing its appetite for large PFI hospital schemes. Noel Plumridge explains why
More than half of the savings made under Whitehall's efficiency agenda have effectively been wiped out by an unexpected rise in the cost of staff pensions across two sectors this year, it has emerged.
A conflict between the government's private investment programme in schools and the education white paper means it must choose between escalating borrowing costs or significantly reducing its...
First Minister Jack McConnell hinted at the prospect of a reorganisation of local government in Scotland as local authorities set council tax levels with an average rise of 3.3%.
