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24 Feb 00
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...
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24 Feb 00
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.
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24 Feb 00
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.
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17 Feb 00
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.
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17 Feb 00
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.
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17 Feb 00
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...
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17 Feb 00
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.
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10 Feb 00
The development of health and social services in Northern Ireland has been halted with the return of political uncertainty in the province.
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10 Feb 00
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).
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10 Feb 00
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.
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10 Feb 00
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.
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10 Feb 00
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...
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10 Feb 00
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...
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3 Feb 00
Local authorities scooped the pool in this week's Charter Mark awards, garnering 41% of the prizes announced by Cabinet Office Minister Mo Mowlam.
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3 Feb 00
French, Italian, Portuguese and Belgian environment ministers were gathering in Brussels this week to back calls for 'Car-Free Day 2000' to be extended across the European Union. The launch on...
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3 Feb 00
Receipts on France's state-run Pari-Mutuel (PMU) horse race betting network are rising, which is good news for the French ministry of finance. The bad news is that the rise is only slight and the...
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3 Feb 00
Ministers will lead a robust reaffirmation of government policy at Labour's Local Governance conference this weekend when they will tell local authorities in blunt terms to 'reform or die'.
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3 Feb 00
National Health Service bed numbers came under renewed scrutiny this week. A spot check revealed that patients were waiting on trolleys much longer than the Department of Health's four-hour limit.
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3 Feb 00
The NHS is failing to meet its New Deal target and there is evidence that a significant number of health service employers have yet to commit themselves to the initiative.
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3 Feb 00
Lack of management resources could threaten the success of primary care groups, the commissioning bodies warned this week.
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3 Feb 00
Conservatives in local government this week defended the sacking of John Redwood, one of the few high-profile members of William Hague's shadow cabinet, claiming he was part of the 'party's past'.
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3 Feb 00
By Maria McHale Education leaders have warned the government that its standards agenda will suffer if councils are forced to fund in full the 3.3% teachers' pay rise announced this week. Education...
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27 Jan 00
Best Value audit and inspection fees are likely to cost English and Welsh councils £56m.
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27 Jan 00
Labour is due to give local authorities an extra £35m in this year's finance settlement but with a warning from ministers that it should be used to curb council tax increases.
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27 Jan 00
The Audit Commission should have its own House of Commons select committee in order to give the public sector watchdog's reports more weight, it was proposed this week.
24 Feb 00Government 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...
