Need a cataract operation, a hip replacement or a heart by-pass? Don't fancy the interminable wait at your local hospital? Fear not.
Within two years, according to plans announced last week by...
Outsourcing firm Capita has been removed from an information technology contract by Norfolk County Council. The company had provided Norfolk's exchequer, payroll, pensions and operational IT services...
Councils will have to produce just eight major service plans by 2006 after ministers unveiled details of long-awaited cuts in the number of documents that must be submitted to Whitehall.
The...
Education managers are urging Whitehall officials to undertake a rigorous analysis of the school funding reforms outlined by Education Secretary Charles Clarke to ensure there is no repeat of this...
A strongly-worded report by the Commons Treasury committee has questioned the competence of the Inland Revenue's leaders.
MPs looked into the tax credits backlog fiasco, the unauthorised suspension...
Reported incidents of violence and aggression against health service staff have increased by almost half since the NHS launched a 'zero tolerance' campaign in 1999.
A report by the Public Accounts...
Southwark council has named Cambridge Education Associates as the stopgap manager of its troubled education service, after consultant WS Atkins pulled out.
CEA will run the service for a year while...
Business consultant Peter Dixon is to be the new chair of the Housing Corporation. He will take over from Baroness Dean, who is standing down in October after six years in office.
Dixon, chair of...
Ministers have been warned to stop playing politics with patient care following the publication of the first independent assessments of NHS services by the sector's watchdog.
The Commission for...
Businesses will be called on to make up a multibillion pound gap in the funding of the London Crossrail project, approved in principle by Transport Secretary Alistair Darling on July 14.
The line,...
The Commons' health select committee has criticised the Department of Health for creating two parallel systems for involving the public in the NHS.
In a report published this week, the MPs said...
The cost of transferring the Government Communications Headquarters' computer systems increased more than 20-fold during its move to a new building in Cheltenham, a National Audit Office report has...
New types of health care workers and new responsibilities for patients are needed to improve the outcomes of NHS treatment, the Left-of-centre Institute for Public Policy Research said this week....
Teaching unions and school standards minister David Miliband have welcomed proposals for a radical shake-up of the examinations system.
Former chief inspector of schools Mike Tomlinson, who...
It would seem the Department for Education and Skills has learned its lesson.
The funding allocations for schools descended into confusion and mutual recrimination earlier this year, following the...
The government signalled the extension of its patients' choice scheme this week, only for the policy to be attacked immediately by Unison.
Health Secretary John Reid said that pilot schemes had...
The chief inspector of prisons could soon be granted powers to scrutinise the wider Prison Service in an attempt to prevent the current 'crises' within the sector from exploding.
In an interview...
A timetable for the introduction of proportional representation in local government has been set out by the Scottish Executive.
In a consultation paper, the Executive says the Local Governance (...
The government's attempt to defuse long-standing criticisms of the Private Finance Initiative by tackling some of its more obvious flaws has been greeted with suspicion by the public sector trade...
NHS financial discipline must be tightened and deficits eradicated, Welsh Health Minister Jane Hutt warned this week after a far-reaching review claimed that demand could overwhelm services in the...
A career civil servant from the Child Support Agency is to take over the helm at the Criminal Records Bureau.
Vince Gaskell, change director at the Child Support Agency, was appointed as the new...
The minister charged with tackling delays in housing benefit payments across UK councils has acknowledged that millions of pounds earmarked for improvements this week will not be enough to eradicate...
Government plans to introduce NHS foundation trusts were hanging in the balance despite this week's narrow victory, after a furious Commons' debate on the issue.
Scotland's auditor general Bob Black is to head his own investigation into the soaring costs of the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh alongside the inquiry conducted by Lord Fraser of...
