The Private Finance Initiative could be costing the NHS an extra £480m a year as private equity providers enjoy a 58% return on their investment, according to research from Manchester Business School.
Potential long-term benefit claimants could be transferred to the private and voluntary sectors after just 14 weeks under government plans to create a multibillion pound 'welfare-to-work' market from...
Ministers and councillors should have more direct control over quangos and arm's-length bodies, Tom McCabe, Scotland's finance minister, has suggested.
NHS staff in Scotland are to receive their entire 2.5% pay increase in April following a surprise decision that conflicts with the phased deal on offer to their counterparts in England and Wales.
Ministers must close female prisons and replace them with community-based units to prevent the criminal justice system becoming a 'social dustbin' for vulnerable and abused women, penal experts have...
Local authorities and NHS trusts might be forced to reduce their carbon count through a mandatory emissions trading scheme, under legislation published this week.
Sir Michael Lyons this week denied that his proposed overhaul of town hall funding would initiate massive hikes in council taxes on expensive homes, and revealed that a long-term plan would accompany...
The Private Finance Initiative project to rebuild the National Physical Laboratory collapsed because neither government nor the contractor appreciated the scale of the challenges involved, MPs said...
Councils and nursery providers have warned that the proposed national curriculum for babies, toddlers and pre-school children needs to be backed with adequate funding if it is to be a success.
MPs have cast doubt on plans to scrap the troubled Child Support Agency and transfer hundreds of thousands of cases to a streamlined body, claiming that more IT problems could follow.
It no longer seems so much 'if' as 'when'. Bizarre, amazing, doomed call it what you will, but the Rev Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness look set to become first and deputy first ministers of...
The Parliamentary and health service Ombudsman has found the Department of Health guilty of 'maladministration' in its bungled attempts to correct an earlier error.
The cost of building and improving the country's major roads is accelerating faster than the average motorway driver, the National Audit Office said this week.
Public sector managers are to be made more accountable for the advice they give to elected members, Tom McCabe, the Scottish finance minister, has disclosed.
Pre-school children are not meeting government-set learning goals because of variable early years teaching standards, education inspectors said this week.
Hospitals could fail the Healthcare Commission's annual health check if they do not treat elderly patients with dignity and give them adequate help with eating.
Unacceptable race inequalities persist in mental health services despite the injection of £16m of public funds committed to tackling the problem, campaigners said this week.
Departmental ministers should have more say over the direction of government policy, while measures must be introduced to improve transparency around planning, an influential committee has reported.
