Town halls could be forced to accelerate their electronic service delivery programmes following the prime minister's pledge to get the whole of Britain on-line by 2005.
The government this week promised £10m in emergency aid to local authorities coping with large numbers of asylum seekers, but Home Office ministers backtracked on a promise to take responsibility for...
Current audit arrangements for councils, largely carried out within the public sector, keep fees down, local government minister Hilary Armstrong claimed this week.
Up to 1.3 million local government workers are set to receive a pay rise of just 3% despite warnings that councils are facing a worsening recruitment crisis.
Health minister John Denham has called on health authorities to give greater support to primary care groups (PCGs) after a Department of Health survey showed wide variations in the amount of money...
Business leaders could be directly elected to regional chambers under a proposal being considered by the government to widen the background of those determining regional policy at local level.
As the vague concept of Best Value turns into a full-blown audit and inspection regime, the reality of what awaits finance chiefs is finally being grasped. And they are not happy.
Well-off patients could have to pay £50 for a 20-minute consultation with a GP as part of a radical overhaul of primary care services, family doctors have predicted this week.
Local authorities breathed a sigh of relief this week as the government endorsed CIPFA's Best Value Accounting Code, accepting the argument that self-regulation is preferable to secondary legislation...
The introduction of directly elected city-region mayors whose responsibilities would cover a much wider territory than previously proposed is being considered by the government.
Government warnings to local authorities to keep down council tax rises may have been heeded. Early forecasts, based on counties' figures, suggest bills will rise by about 6% on average in line...
PricewaterhouseCoopers last week announced its intention to split its business operations into at least two divisions, recognising the complaints of conflicts of interest in the Big Five firms.
Social landlords are stepping up pressure on the government to improve the way councils pay housing benefit, ahead of any long-term changes to the benefits system.
Auditors could be forced into making political decisions for which they are ill-equipped under the new Best Value regime, a House of Commons committee was told this week.
The government was this week accused of being the country's most wasteful landlord as new figures show that almost one in five public sector properties is empty.
The National Assembly for Wales has announced an extra £2m for children's services following a damning report that traced two decades of child abuse in local authority homes.
The government has been forced radically to revise its attempts to regenerate the regions after a damning report from its own Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) criticised Labour's approach as...
A new video featuring ethnic minority civil servants will be taken into local communities to try to change Whitehall's 'all white' image, Cabinet Office minister Mo Mowlam announced this week.
The government has insisted that legislation creating directly elected mayors will still be law by the summer, despite this week's defeat in the House of Lords of part of the Local Government Bill.
Chris Woodhead, the chief inspector for schools, has warned that performance-related pay will have little real impact on teachers' earnings, because one in ten head teachers are incapable of...
Cabinet secretary Sir Richard Wilson this week admitted there was scope for changing the way government departments are funded, and that they could even consider bidding for money from a central 'pot...
Housing associations have been promised lighter regulation and less bureaucracy as the Housing Corporation studies new ways to cope with the growing number of registered social landlords (RSLs).
