The coalition government today announced departmental business plans across Whitehall. These are supposed to be 'revolutionary', but the revolution is more spin than substance
Government cuts to capital spending will not mean the end of the PFI, PPPs or Local Improvement Finance Trusts. It's actually the opposite - without these vehicles, the future for the public sector...
In these uncertain times, councils can take a more hands-on approach to development and regeneration. Paul McGuinness of GVA Financial Consulting discusses the options
The health secretary has proposed using risk-sharing deals between drug companies and the NHS as the new basis for extending access to medicines. But this is not a sustainable system
David Cameron has made speedy and sweeping reforms to the public sector, but the spirit of Sir Humphrey Appleby lives on and is determined to thwart change
Necessity is the mother of invention. So, with revenue funding for local government cut by 26%, all sorts of things that were once unimaginable suddenly look eminently doable.
Michael Gove says that increased university fees will not deter applications from lower-income students. He must be the first Tory minister who believes that economic incentives have no effect on...
Somewhere between Sir Philip Green's Efficiency Review and the coalition's Comprehensive Spending Review, the much-derided reputation of public sector managers came in for yet another battering
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude today insisted that the government was not ideologically driven to scrap quangos. But he would be more persuasive if we had sight of a master plan
Wrong decisions on grant distribution in next month's finance settlement could throw councils into serious hardship with the ultimate financial survival of some coming into question
The real story about the New Schools Network is not financial but political. Government support for it is part of a war over the future of our school system.
Abolishing these agencies by 2012 is proving a messy business. Winding down costs are now put at £1.4 billion - roughly the same as the new regional growth fund.
An important lesson from the Spending Review is that the UK government sees the devolved administrations as subordinate, with limited functions and no wider role beyond the discharge of those...
The coalition has succeeded in giving Boris Johnson a fillip and uniting Lib Dem, Labour and inner London MPs against a policy that sounds harsher by the day.
Progressive pension campaigners will be mightily relieved today that the review's recommendations - accepted by the government - maintain the main planks of the settlement
Last week I questioned in the Public Finance blog whether the Comprehensive Spending Review would rejuvenate Total Place. Post CSR, my blunt answer has to be 'no'
Failure to get the housing finance system right will once again mean increasing numbers sleeping rough. Demand for homes will increase beyond capacity in cheaper areas, with health, education and...
While today's growth figures were not as bad as expected by analysts, the fall from the previous quarter together with last week's Spending Review will have focused minds in Numbers 10 and 11 Downing...
