An extra £65m is to be spent on health centres, clinics and other primary care facilities in Scotland, First Minister Jack McConnell announced this week.
Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has asked local government pension funds to recalculate the disputed cost of revoking last April's increase in the scheme's retirement age to 65.
Business leaders have dismissed regional development agencies as irrelevant to the success of their companies, saying they do not understand their role or even why they exist.
Internet-based information about public services could encourage social exclusion and segregation, research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found.
Finally, a hospital waiting time target that should genuinely help patients. But can the tough new plan to cut the time from GP referral to treatment to 18 weeks be achieved? Anthony Harrison and...
Britain still dumps most of its rubbish in landfill sites, instead of recycling it. But tough new European Union regulations are set to change all that. David Meilton reports on how councils are...
Many of Bexley council's school pupils were being educated in huts, with winds raging through broken windows. Then the chance of a £30m PFI refurbishment programme came along. Mike Ellsmore explains...
Birmingham City Council has this week confirmed that it will offer emergency loans to uninsured residents whose properties were damaged by the tornado that tore through the city on July 28.
Two-thirds of local authorities have had their plans to meet the decent homes target approved by ministers but almost 10% missed this week's cut-off date for submitting firm proposals.
NHS managers will not know what hit them. Despite government assurances that there would be no significant reorganisation following the general election,
Local authorities are vulnerable to a legal challenge that their outsourced services breach new European Union rules designed to avoid the overpayment of contractors, Public Finance has learnt.
Local government must step up its efficiency drive by adopting bigger and bolder strategies, the sector's procurement champion Tim Byles has told Public Finance.
The joint government/trade union body the Public Services Forum has swung into action to set up two panels to assess problematic sickness absence and diversity issues.
A democracy needs to be sure that the figures on which decisions are made are accurate and do not mask a hidden agenda. The Statistics Commission chair would like to see safeguards enshrined in law
The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's review of the local government grant formula must take greater account of the extra cost of providing essential public services to far-flung rural...
The civil service does need urgent reform to bring it into line with other parts of the public sector, argues Sir Michael Bichard. But legislation is not the answer
For all the talk of a dramatic urban renaissance, population flight from Britain's city centres to suburbia and the countryside continues apace. Tony Travers explains what needs to be done to reverse...
Sir Gus O'Donnell is soon to take over the Whitehall hot seat newly vacated by Sir Andrew Turnbull. Will he follow in his reforming steps or take a different path? Mark Conrad finds out
Gordon Brown might mean what he says, but does he say what he means? The government's Alice in Wonderland approach to its Spending Review timings has a lot more to do with politics than economics
A new report has found local authorities wanting in their financial management and governance. But the figures do not tell the whole story, and there are solid foundations on which to build...
You wouldn't know it, but the NHS Plan had its fifth birthday this week. There were no celebrations and ministers ignored the occasion. So what ever happened to this 'once-in-a-lifetime' opportunity...
The new head of the NHF will be seeing his Edinburgh home only at weekends from now on. But that's a small price to pay for a man with a mission, he tells Neil Merrick
Although public sector bodies have adopted tough safeguards against fraud in recent years, many staff believe these exist on paper only. But now there is a toolkit to help put these policies into...
The Office of Government Commerce's trading arm this week reported that it had made efficiency savings worth £321m on £2bn worth of procurement deals during 2004/05.
