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10 Jul 08
If Sir Peter Gershon has left one legacy it is that he has made efficiency a major part of public sector discourse. This, at least, is the view of Chief Secretary to the Treasury Yvette Cooper.
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28 Feb 08
If a government department spends more than £40bn a year, should it have a qualified accountant as its finance director?
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21 Feb 08
The credit crunch scored a first this week, the nationalisation of a bank. But behind the scenes it is also having a serious impact on public sector pension schemes and proposed PFI projects. Paul...
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6 Dec 07
If the government was looking for someone to crack the whip over the house-building industry, John Callcutt was probably not the right man.
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15 Nov 07
Local government finance directors in Scotland are overwhelmingly opposed to plans to replace the council tax with a local income tax.
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20 Sep 07
It was inevitable that Professor Martin Cave's recommendation that all providers of social housing should come under a single regulator would fail to please everybody.
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13 Sep 07
No wonder the King's Fund had to take it upon themselves to commission Sir Derek Wanless's review of progress against his 2002 recommendations on funding the NHS.
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16 Aug 07
NHS foundation trusts have been accused of circumventing the cap Parliament imposed on their private patient work by establishing arm's-length bodies whose income does not show up in their accounts.
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2 Aug 07
So it's official. Councils are cordially invited to the government's bumper house-building party that is due to run until at least 2020.
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21 Jun 07
'Grotesque failure' and 'total farce' were the more polite terms anti-poverty activist Bob Geldof used earlier this month to signal his disenchantment with the aid record of the world's richest...
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7 Jun 07
'It'll never last,' tends to be the not-so-cynical reaction when we read of apparently loved-up celebrities jealously guarding their wealth and status by drawing up complex pre-nuptial agreements....
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3 May 07
Outsourcing education services to private companies is meant to iron out performance problems, but its critics in the public sector claim it's a far from ideal solution that often makes things worse.
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19 Apr 07
He's a 'Stalinist', grumpy, tax-and-spend loner who has suppressed public sector wages, hidden national liabilities and pillaged our pension pots.
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22 Mar 07
It wasn't quite a throwback to the Cold War era of rowdy Commons debates and campaigners chained to the gates of Greenham Common.
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22 Feb 07
The UK, it seems, is not a happy place to be a child.
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18 Jan 07
What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago, the then Audit Commission chair James Strachan was reserved in his praise for councils' financial management. Shortly afterwards, he unexpectedly...
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9 Nov 06
Efficiency is the buzzword of the moment in public services, and that is just as true in Holyrood as it is in Westminster.
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23 Feb 06
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.
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15 Sep 05
The rules of the much-debated Private Finance Initiative game are about to change. The Office for National Statistics is soon expected to start counting a new tranche of PFI deals against public...
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30 Jun 05
The collapse of ambitious plans to redevelop northwest London's health care casts a long shadow
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23 Jun 05
Few local government officers or even civil servants would disagree that the housing finance system is over-complex and should probably be reformed.
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25 Nov 04
Doug Smith's resignation as chief executive of the Child Support Agency is not so much a solution to a crisis, more the beginning of a new chapter in an 11-year saga.
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23 Sep 04
One of the biggest criticisms levied at Sir Peter Gershon's Whitehall efficiency review is that any sincere attempt to quantify public sector waste has been lost in the resulting 'machismo' exhibited...
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29 Jul 04
Last week, Health Secretary John Reid outlined how he intends to save £500m on NHS bureaucracy by slashing the number of quangos. But the real work has only just begun.
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4 Mar 04
When the NHS was established in 1948, Nye Bevan believed its effect on the nation's health would be so profound that future governments would not have to increase its budget greatly.
10 Jul 08If Sir Peter Gershon has left one legacy it is that he has made efficiency a major part of public sector discourse. This, at least, is the view of Chief Secretary to the Treasury Yvette Cooper.
21 Feb 08The credit crunch scored a first this week, the nationalisation of a bank. But behind the scenes it is also having a serious impact on public sector pension schemes and proposed PFI projects. Paul...
