The Accounts Commission in Scotland has told councils to review their policy on financial reserves after it was disclosed that these currently amount to almost 9% of total annual expenditure.
Council leaders are to deliver a stark warning to ministers that key public services will suffer unless they are given significant new resources in the forthcoming Spending Review, Public Finance...
As governments wrestle with funding growing public services, big business is getting away with millions in tax avoidance schemes. Tightening tax laws could claw back vital cash for social investment
Fire authorities are being dilatory in implementing the modernisation agenda due to come into force following last year's firefighters' strike, the Audit Commission says.
Doctors' leaders have warned that the government's determination to make public services competitive may undermine general practice and is tantamount to a trade in patients.
The Local Government Association has launched a review of the Improvement and Development Agency as part of its programme to scrutinise its central bodies.
Network Rail and the Strategic Rail Authority must be scrapped and a new public sector agency combining both functions set up to end the chaos on Britain's railways, MPs have demanded.
The objections have been heard, the legislation passed, the votes counted and boards of governors installed. But, as the first NHS foundation trusts settle into their new status this week, they will...
The Welsh Assembly government will find it difficult to forge ahead with the proposals for increased autonomy in the long-awaited Richard Commission Report should it choose to back the plans.
Communities Minister Margaret Curran has announced a £284m investment package for affordable housing in Scotland, a 7% increase on the figure for 2003/04.
The Scottish Executive is on course to meet the majority of targets set out in its draft budget for 2004/05, Finance and Public Services Minister Andy Kerr announced this week.
Whitehall's union leaders have asked ministers to clarify the nature and extent of job cuts and relocations urgently, following the Lyons review and the chancellor's Budget statement.
Better assessment of those applying for incapacity and disability benefits is saving the taxpayer £50m a year, the Public Accounts Committee has found.
Perplexed MPs took a senior Audit Commission manager to task on March 30 for failing to give a clear answer on whether the commission should take over housing association regulation from the Housing...
The Treasury is determined to monitor Whitehall departments to ensure that extra investment reaches the front line and is not held up in overrunning capital projects, Chancellor Gordon Brown warned...
Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy has told his party's spring conference that he is not scared to use the word 'redistribution' when describing his tax and spending plans.
Gordon Brown's pledge to prune Whitehall's army of Sir Humphreys and slash billions of pounds from the government's annual spending bill ensured that these issues dominated last week's post-Budget...
MPs questioned the credibility of the social security system this week with figures showing that one in five benefit decisions is either wrong or contains errors.