News

  • Public Finance
    10 Jul 03
    It is hard not to feel sorry for Inland Revenue chair Sir Nick Montagu. With Treasury permanent secretary Gus O'Donnell intent on subjecting the Inland Revenue and Customs...
  • Public Finance
    10 Jul 03
    Housing associations are unlikely to rush into paying board members up to £20,000 per year, the National Housing Federation said this week. The Housing Corporation announced on July 2 that...
  • Public Finance
    10 Jul 03
    Six senior managers for Network Rail and Balfour Beatty and the firms that employed them have been charged with manslaughter over the Hatfield rail crash that killed four people. The six men and...
  • Public Finance
    10 Jul 03
    Strategic Rail Authority chair Richard Bowker launched a robust defence of rail privatisation at a parliamentary hearing on July 8, telling sceptical MPs that he wanted to 'drive a stake through the...
  • Public Finance
    10 Jul 03
    The Local Government Association's hunt for a successor to Neil Kinghan has been thrown into disarray after top Treasury mandarin Adam Sharples turned down the job, Public Finance has learned....
  • Public Finance
    10 Jul 03
    The government needs to target its proposed hike in higher education cash more effectively to those who need it, a Commons committee claimed this week. It also argued that plans to improve university...
  • Public Finance
    10 Jul 03
    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...
  • Public Finance
    10 Jul 03
    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.
  • Public Finance
    10 Jul 03
    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...
  • Public Finance
    10 Jul 03
    Minister for Children Margaret Hodge is to propose a commissioner for children in a green paper to be published in the autumn. She told a Local Government Association conference on July 8 that the...
  • Public Finance
    10 Jul 03
    The London Borough of Tower Hamlets has suspended two senior regeneration officers following allegations of large-scale misuse of public funds at organisations linked to two borough councillors....
  • Public Finance
    10 Jul 03
    The Assets Recovery Agency's legal powers to seize criminals' property still have to be tested in the courts, its director conceded this week. Jane Earl said the agency had frozen £6m in assets in...
  • Public Finance
    3 Jul 03
    The Commons' Public Accounts Committee has ruled that the £87m paid out by the Department for International Development to alleviate water poverty in 2001/02 was well spent. But the MPs demanded...
  • Public Finance
    3 Jul 03
    Scottish Water has defended a controversial scheme to pay bonuses to all of its employees at a time when it is being criticised for soaring charges. Politicians and business leaders claimed the...
  • Public Finance
    3 Jul 03
    The possibility of a merger of the ombudsman services for local authorities, central government and health has receded indefinitely, local government ombudsman Tony Redmond has complained in his...
  • Public Finance
    3 Jul 03
    The Inland Revenue lacks ambition in its target of persuading half of all employers to pay tax and national insurance by the due date each month, according to the Commons' Public Accounts Committee...
  • Public Finance
    3 Jul 03
    Network Rail has announced plans to cut £1.3bn off its spending by 2006/07 through efficiency savings equivalent to 20% of its costs. The company issued its business plan in March, in which it...
  • Public Finance
    3 Jul 03
    Imposed targets and growing local autonomy must proceed hand-in-hand to improve public services, a study of some of England's best councils concludes. The Improvement and Development Agency,...
  • Public Finance
    3 Jul 03
    Threatening to prosecute parents has caused a marked reduction in classroom truancy, the government claimed this week. Figures from the Department for Education and Skills on July 2 showed that...
  • Public Finance
    3 Jul 03
    Hopes that a deal on consultants' terms and conditions could be struck were raised this week when the new health secretary invited doctors' leaders to a meeting to discuss the way forward.
  • Public Finance
    3 Jul 03
    Westminster City Council has spent more money in the past 18 months trying to trace the assets of its disgraced former leader Dame Shirley Porter than it has been able to recover. Allegations...
  • Public Finance
    3 Jul 03
    Fire authority employers have warned of further industrial strife in the wake of the plans to overhaul firefighters' working practices and service structures.
  • Public Finance
    3 Jul 03
    An influential think-tank has criticised relations between council officials and civil servants in Scotland. A Scottish Council Foundation report, Innovation in public services, resulted from a...
  • Public Finance
    3 Jul 03
    The government's anti-age discrimination proposals unveiled this week should not force employees to work until they 'burn out' before they qualify for pensions, Unison has warned
  • Public Finance
    3 Jul 03
    Sickness absence costs the roads and water services in Northern Ireland more than £2m a year, the auditor general has found. In a report this week, John Dowdall said that 40,000 days were lost in...

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