A committee of MPs has castigated the NHS Executive for its failure to manage investment in IT projects and warns that without a major 'sea change' its £1bn strategy will not deliver value for money.
Scotland's largest public-private partnership scheme to rebuild Glasgow's secondary schools would not have been affordable without additional government funding, the city's finance director told...
The government launched a stinging attack on the quality of adoption services this week in what could be the first move to loosen local authorities' grip on social services.
Labour reaffirmed its faith in the Private Finance Initiative this week when local government minister Hilary Armstrong unveiled 14 new schemes, totalling £300m.
The government has offered high-performing councils a 'third way' to hang on to housing stock, as registered social landlords were put on course to become the dominant housing providers by 2004.
The slow and painful negotiations to shore up the ailing Pimlico School PFI deal have been given a new lease of life with a last-minute extension of the credit allocation for the project.
The finance director of the largest local authority in England has questioned the value-for-money justification for public-private partnerships and admitted that she has doubts about the cost...
The government has reacted strongly to an Audit Commission report which says disabled people are facing long waits for equipment that is often sub-standard or even useless.
The Inland Revenue may be compromising its independence by working too closely with the private contractor EDS on a ten-year outsourcing deal, the National Audit Office has warned.
Housing associations should not overstretch themselves by 'dabbling' in too many new activities, according to the chief executive of one of London's largest registered social landlords.
Money meant for frontline council services is being used to fund an ever-burgeoning local government pension bill instead. Local authorities in England and Wales spent almost £2bn in 1998/99 on...
The Ministry of Defence failed to maximise value for money in its £612m telecommunications system under the Private Finance Initiative, the National Audit Office has found.
The government signalled further expansion of the health service telephone helpline NHS Direct this week after a study found it had lifted some of the pressure on out-of-hours GP services.
The government defiantly signalled its increasing commitment to public-private partnerships this week with the announcement that the total value of such projects will almost double to £20bn over the...
The health service's financial problems look set to deepen, with health authorities and hospitals predicting major deficits for 2000/01, despite ministers' hopes of a return to financial balance.
Bath and North East Somerset's social services department must improve its children's services if it is to meet the challenges of Best Value, according to a joint report from the Audit Commission and...
The Treasury is no longer considered to be the 'enemy' of other Whitehall departments, Gill Noble, deputy director of its public services directorate, said this week.
A blunder by civil servants of 'gargantuan proportions' has cost the Benefits Agency dear, with the government announcing that it is to lose all its policy and operational responsibility for pensions...
GPs were told direct from Downing Street that they must embrace change or face extinction this week. The health service must be reinvented as a 'twenty-first century service sector industry', Prime...
NHS managers and doctors were asking how they would cope with increased patient expectation and lack of cash this week as Health Secretary Alan Milburn launched a plan to cut deaths from heart...
Council tax bills across England and Wales are predicted to rise by an average of 6.3% to £837 for band D properties in 2000/01 about three times the rate of inflation.
