A chief finance officer at a council in the north of England did not rule out issuing further section 114 notices over potentially unlawful spending, having already issued one last month.
The lack of clarity over ministerial involvement in approving Levelling Up Fund bids has been branded “unsatisfactory” by parliament’s Public Accounts Committee.
The three major unions representing council workers in England have requested a “substantial pay rise” this year to help mitigate the impact of soaring inflation on their members.
Government plans to cut the civil service by 91,000 jobs in three years are more drastic than those experienced at even the harshest point of austerity in the 2010s, trade unions have said, warning...
A West Midlands council is looking to commercialise its management of parks, theatres and museums in a bid to reduce the burden they place on its revenue budget.
Public bodies could find it difficult to retain senior staff if the decade-long trend of sharper pay reductions at the top of the sector continues, an expert has warned.
Scotland is set to prioritise spending on health, education and climate change over the next four years, leaving other areas such as local government facing cuts, according to experts.
The government is set to make it a statutory requirement for councils in England to have independent members on audit committees as part of local audit reforms.
The Welsh health service will need more money from the devolved government to deal with its large backlog of people stuck on waiting lists, a spending watchdog has said, before warning that funding...
Council workers in Scotland look increasingly likely to take industrial action if demands for a larger pay rise amid high inflation are not met, according to a union official.
An English city council expects a multi-million-pound funding gap in its 2022-23 budget, partly fuelled by rampant inflation and social care pressures.
An MP has asked the government for clarity on where ‘levelling up’ money is being distributed around the UK, suggesting the array of funding pots makes it “difficult, if not impossible” to see which...
The government has said it is working to improve its evaluation work to ensure major projects provide value for money after a parliamentary committee warned there was “no evidence [of] what is...
Crisis-hit Slough Borough Council has been instructed to sell the majority of its property holdings in a bid to get its finances back on a sustainable footing.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced a windfall tax on energy companies’ “extraordinary” profits to help fund support measures aimed at helping people through the cost-of-living crisis.
The government is set to amend legislation so that local authorities can exit contracts with Russian companies, ensuring public funds do not contribute to the nation’s “barbaric war machine”.
The Scottish government has been told it should provide local authorities with a multi-year financial settlement to enable robust medium-term planning amid long-term funding reductions.
English councils may need to spend much more than the government has forecast when implementing reforms aimed at reducing the long-term cost of social care.
Public sector borrowing fell in April as the recovery from the Covid-19 shock continued, but measures to ease the cost-of-living crisis remain “tricky” according to commentators.
