The Department of Health has signalled a cautious start to its latest modernisation initiative, confirming that only 15 primary care trusts will be formed this year. Thirteen PCTs will be launched on...
Scottish finance minister Jack McConnell this week underlined the Scottish Executive's commitment to continuing with PFI and other public-private partnerships. But he added that the system was not...
The Private Finance Initiative is expensive and inflexible and deflects from government priorities, a House of Commons Treasury committee was told this week.
The Blair government has launched a ten-point revamp of its New Deal project in an effort to counter suggestions that the scheme is not doing enough to help young people.
A local authority insisted this week that it had taken steps to reduce stress among employees after paying a record £203,000 to a former warden at a site for gypsies.
Police forces in England and Wales could lose 300 officers as a result of a Treasury decision not to allow the National Crime Squad and the National Criminal Intelligence Service to claim back their...
The chairman of an independent inquiry looking at the pattern of the school year has criticised the present system as 'medieval' and warned that 'the status quo is not an option'.
A Best Value partnership to provide audit services at Birmingham City Council means that auditors from the council and the private sector will work side by side.
Whether the outbreak of flu sweeping Britain is an epidemic is a moot point. Statistically, it isn't. The official figures for reported cases are little more than for January last year.
English National Parks this week warned that the disappointing financial settlement for 2000/01 could delay essential conservation projects and hamper its ability to respond to government priorities...
Health minister Lord Hunt has defended the government's pioneering advice service, NHS Direct, from accusations that it is clogging up A&E departments with flu victims.
The benefits system is still losing billions of pounds of public money due to fraud and inefficiency in spite of attempts to improve the service, the Commons Public Accounts Committee has found.
Local education authorities that refuse to take bullying seriously could face increasing legal action from the victims, a leading teaching union has warned.
Police funding must be doubled for the next three years to avoid cuts in staffing, police authorities in England and Wales will tell the Home Office next month.
Many so-called regeneration projects are, in effect, schemes to help manage the irreversible decline of neighbourhoods caused by low demand for social housing, according a study commissioned by the...
The Scottish Executive is facing a showdown with Westminster next week over the treatment of asylum seekers. Home Secretary Jack Straw is anxious to persuade Scotland to accept an extra 1,000 asylum...
The Treasury wants members of its public services directorate to shadow head teachers, NHS executives and senior local government officials to establish a better grasp of government spending...
The fate of the controversial Private Finance Initiative scheme at London's Pimlico school is likely to be resolved in the next two weeks after five years of acrimony.
Schools minister Estelle Morris has conceded that the government is creating and promoting a market for the private sector to take over the running of failing schools.
The government's drive to deliver public services via the Internet is being undermined by Whitehall's 'risk-averse' culture and its inability to respond to change quickly, the first major...
The first of a rolling series of Audit Commission and Social Services Inspectorate reports into Welsh social services have produced a winner and a loser.
