Almost half of nursing and care homes for older and disabled people fail to meet the national minimum standards on administering residents' prescription medicines, the Commission for Social Care...
Public sector organisations should introduce operating and financial reviews, even though the government has dropped plans to make them compulsory for the private sector, CIPFA has said.
Local authorities in England and Scotland have opened the annual trial of strength with the government over council tax with the traditional pleas for more funding and warnings of service cuts.
Lenders and developers are showing renewed interest in housing schemes funded through the Private Finance Initiative, a leading civil servant said this week.
More than £9.3m a year could be saved if prisoners deemed suitable for electronic tagging as a condition of early release were sent home when eligible, government auditors said this week.
The Home Office is set to move a key accounting unit from Liverpool to its London headquarters to help prevent a repeat of the 'spectacular' financial errors unearthed by auditors this week.
A Northern council may be forced to merge some of its housing companies after being hit by the government's retreat over the way funds are allocated across the country.
Britain's graffiti and vandalism-scarred railway stations are in a 'deplorable state' and the Department for Transport must take urgent action, senior backbench MPs are demanding.
A 'year zero' comprehensive spending review of all public sector spending in Northern Ireland has been announced by secretary of state Peter Hain. The review could lead to the abolition of some...
The government was this week accused of failing Britain's poorest groups after it emerged that up to £7bn in benefits went unclaimed in 2003/04, while take-up of key welfare payments has fallen since...
Health economists have called into doubt the government's presumption that its planned transfer of 5% of current hospital activity £2.4bn in budget terms to primary and social care will be cost-...
Whitehall's under-fire Department for Work and Pensions will be asked to produce an improvement plan this summer after being picked to pilot Sir Gus O'Donnell's capability reviews.
The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is refusing to compensate councils for lost grant, even though the government's own statisticians have admitted the data used to calculate it is flawed.
Whitehall's biggest department was this week described as 'in crisis', following claims that its huge efficiency drive has left two-thirds of benefit payments delayed, services rife with IT problems...
The controversy surrounding the education white paper was stepped up this week as an influential committee of MPs failed to agree on a response to the government's proposed school reforms.
The Department of Heath must restructure the debts owed by the 169 NHS acute and primary care trusts or risk politically explosive ward closures and service cuts, the NHS Confederation has warned.
Benefits claimants are being frustrated and confused because Department for Work and Pensions leaflets are written in 'gobbledegook', Public Accounts Committee chair Edward Leigh said this week.
A High Court judge has ruled that the criteria used by many primary care trusts to assess whether someone should have to pay for their nursing care are 'fatally flawed' in law.
Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton could reinvest £4bn £7bn per year into the welfare system through savings and new tax income gleaned by reducing benefit claimants by 1 million - a target...
Scottish councils have warned that they face a bill of up to £560m and council tax increases of more than £80 a year if they settle disputes over an equal pay agreement.
