Town hall leaders fear the government is pressing ahead too quickly with its reforms to children's services, after Education Secretary Charles Clarke revealed he wanted a Bill in next month's Queen's...
Public sector unions have condemned as 'spiteful' the decision by the capital's local authorities to withdraw the offer of an extra £200 London weighting for the lowest-paid council workers.
Ministers should scrap all national targets for secondary school pupils because they have now 'served their purpose', an influential committee of MPs reported this week.
Local government leaders have called for long-term sustainable funding to ensure that the latest plans to crack down on antisocial behaviour are a success.
Social care is to get its own voice in Whitehall with the creation of a national director of social care, Health Secretary John Reid told social services chiefs this week.
Councils are failing to drive down costs, improve productivity and provide greater customer satisfaction, local government minister Nick Raynsford told local authority chief executives this week.
The government has rejected independent research commissioned by the National Union of Teachers suggesting that this year's schools' funding crisis has resulted in the loss of almost 9,000 teaching...
The British Medical Association this week urged the government to act against aggressive patients after a survey revealed one in three doctors had experienced violence in the past year.
Oxford City Council has been found guilty of maladministration for deducting council tax arrears from the wrong man after trying to trace a defaulter using only a telephone directory.
Audit Commission chair James Strachan has appointed Frances Done, the former chief executive of Manchester's 2002 Commonwealth Games, as the watchdog's new head of local government, housing and...
Former top Treasury mandarin Lucy de Groot, who until last month was Gordon Brown's director of public services, has said the government is confused about its own philosophy of 'new localism'.
Lift, the public-private partnership model developed by the NHS to meet the building needs of the primary care sector, also offers a useful procurement option for local government, the Office of the...
Rail passengers are forced to travel in 'intolerable conditions' on overcrowded trains and urgent action is needed to stop the situation from getting even worse, according to MPs.
As launches go, the unveiling of the draft Office of the Deputy Prime Minister/Employers' Organisation pay and workforce strategy for councils was more Titanic than QEII .
The Office of National Statistics has told Public Finance that it is considering whether £52bn in public liabilities for decommissioning nuclear facilities must be entered in the national accounts.
Labour's controversial plan to overhaul the NHS has placed hospital trusts at high financial risk while police authorities, probation boards and local government are all blighted by poor internal...
Northern Ireland's Review of Public Administration, published this week, has described five options for how the province's public services can be provided in the future.
The Scottish Executive is to recruit an expert from the private sector to head a new performance and innovation unit as part of plans to strengthen the office of permanent secretary and sharpen up...
Home Secretary David Blunkett's plans to build two 'super prisons' to combat the UK's rapidly growing inmate population are unnecessary and ill-considered, it was claimed this week.
Trade unions got their wish and delivered a bloody nose to ministers at the Labour Party Conference in Bournemouth last week on the issue of foundation hospitals.
The Criminal Records Bureau is likely to refocus and scale back by millions its original targets on criminal records checks after privately conceding that it has misjudged demand for basic...
The Local Government Association has denied rumours that its chief executive Sir Brian Briscoe is to leave and confirmed that he has signed a new contract to stay on at the organisation.
