Local Government Secretary Stephen Byers has pledged to forge a new relationship between central and local government by slashing bureaucracy and giving authorities greater financial freedom.
Risk management can have a major impact on councils' progress in achieving strategic objectives and is not a 'one-off exercise', the Audit Commission has warned.
Birmingham City Council is setting a precedent in housing transfers by asking lenders to underwrite loans worth £1bn before it consults tenants over the move.
Peter Mandelson has outlined a vision of English devolution that puts 'people before structures' and gives communities the tools to bring about their own renaissance.
Hopes that a new GP contract will be agreed soon rose this week after Health Secretary Alan Milburn invited the NHS Confederation to lead the discussions on behalf of health service employers.
An £8.5m capital programme to build 22 new children's homes in Northern Ireland has been announced by the province's Health and Social Services Minister, Bairbre de Brún.
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city riven by divisions. On one side are hip Labour councillors ready to plough as much as £488,000 into a youth culture event, the Love Parade.
The make-or-break date for the government's policy on directly elected mayors looks increasingly like October 18 after Brighton and Hove Council became the latest authority to declare it will hold a...
Fraud Squad officers have been called in to investigate financial irregularities in the Scottish Borders Council (SBC), as the authority's internal inquiry into a near-£4m overspend nears its...
The Northern Ireland Assembly's finance and personnel committee gave a surprise endorsement to the Private Finance Initiative and other forms of public-private partnerships in a report published this...
Nursing-home owners in Devon are having a crisis meeting with the new leaders of the county council in a last-ditch attempt to solve their bitter dispute over fees.
Sir Andrew Foster will take over as head of the Best Value Inspectorate after Wendy Thomson was poached by 10 Downing Street to head up a new team advising Tony Blair on public service reform.
Twenty-seven councils have been given the green light to sell off swathes of their housing stock as the government renewed its commitment last week to the large-scale transfer of council housing to...
London Mayor Ken Livingstone has warned that the capital's social and public infrastructure is falling apart because of a lack of investment by central government.
Ulster Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson has claimed that unionists will lose out to nationalists as a result of proposals from the Hayes Review of health and social services in Northern Ireland.
The controversy over the future of public services continued to rage this week with warnings that Tony Blair's plans for widespread private sector involvement to drive up standards could become '...
Councils at the vanguard of on-line service delivery have blamed the private sector's unwillingness to form close partnerships and their own uncertainties over procurement for the hesitant...
