Local government leaders are warning of 'major concerns' over the planned overhaul of Comprehensive Performance Assessments put out to consultation by the Audit Commission last month.
Authorities...
Housing associations are finding it difficult to collect escalating rent arrears from tenants and 'a major rethink is needed', the Audit Commission warned this week.
A report by the local...
Smaller housing associations are being squeezed out of new development programmes as the Housing Corporation diverts money towards larger landlords.
During the coming year, 28,500 new homes will be...
Traditional employer-staff differences over local government pay re-emerged this week after the trade union and council representatives completed their submissions to the body set up to investigate...
Local authority employers are demanding sweeping changes to the 'nine-to-five' working culture and a radical overhaul of the national pay bargaining system to modernise town hall working practices...
May 1 was to have been the date when elections occurred in each of the three devolved nations of the United Kingdom Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Except, as is so often the case in the...
Social landlords should compete for the right to manage houses transferred from local authorities, a leading lender said this week.
Competition might raise the quality of post-transfer management...
Foundation trusts will not be able to opt out of the NHS's Agenda for Change pay deal, Health Secretary Alan Milburn confirmed this week as he launched a concerted campaign to quash opposition to the...
Registered social landlords are generating increasing funds from activities other than social housing.
New figures show that income from non-core activities rose by 22% in 2001/02 from £662m to £...
The government has failed to think through the impact of its plans to build hundreds of thousands of extra homes in the Southeast, according to the Commons committee scrutinising Deputy Prime...
Every local authority will be asked to explain its education budget decisions in an attempt to resolve the row between ministers and councils over allocations to schools.
Education Secretary...
Rail maintenance and building contractor Jarvis will have only support functions in its controversial new contract to advise education authorities on good practice.
Disclosure this week of the £21....
Health minister John Hutton has urged nurses to become hospital governors as part of the government's foundation trust reforms.
Speaking at the Royal College of Nursing's annual conference in...
The Criminal Records Bureau is to place more of the administrative burden for criminal checks on employers while charging them for new services under plans to generate much-needed revenue for the...
Primary care t rusts must prepare for an exodus of clinical managers over the next two years, according to a survey by the NHS Alliance.
The body, which represents PCTs, said that half the doctors...
NHS consultants this week threatened industrial action over their contracts despite the government's abandonment of plans to make them work over weekends and in the evenings.
Last year, consultants...
Ministers are poised to create the first urban development corporation in ten years in an attempt to help house-building east of London.
Proposals for a UDC in Thurrock, Essex, were published by...
The government may have to impose measures to resolve employment disputes in outsourced council contracts after insiders claimed this week that negotiations between unions and business were fraught...
Work will begin in the autumn on a groundbreaking public-private partnership that will revolutionise health services in Greater Manchester, it has been announced.
The £100m Manchester, Salford and...
Head teachers this week accused ministers of playing a deliberate 'smoke and mirrors' game with education budgets, using 'double or triple counting' tricks to play up bottom-line increases in funding...
If Amey, the cash-strapped former linchpin of the support services contracting world, were to rise from the ashes, it was hardly surprising that it should be under a foreign flag. Overseas firms have...
Local government is still plagued with 'severe' recruitment and retention problems that are placing unmanageable burdens on staff, forcing councils to privatise services because they cannot afford to...
A three-year government review of rent restructuring has been criticised by the Chartered Institute of Housing for avoiding major questions.
The review, launched by the Office of the Deputy Prime...
Councils ranked 'excellent' in the Comprehensive Performance Assessments are becoming increasingly frustrated at the government's failure to deliver the promised freedoms and flexibilities.
The 22...
Local authority spending has risen by 26% since 1998, according to a new survey, with education leading the way.
The survey, by market intelligence service Key Note, shows that councils spent £77....
