It's no wonder that questions are being asked about the future of the Audit Commission. Comprehensive Area Assessments were a bureaucratic and expensive process concerned with assessing how...
We dismiss concerns about migration and the impact on local services as 'ignorant' or 'racist' at our peril. Increased population numbers and changes in the composition of local populations have...
So the government has announced its plans for economic development on the cheap. Regional development agencies will be replaced by Local Enterprise Partnerships by March 2012
The private sector, we were told last week, has so far borne the brunt of this recession. Many millions of its employees have had their pay frozen and pensions restricted, said the chancellor in his...
Even just in narrow financial terms the case for fundamental change is strong, with the bill for 'social protection' doubling in real terms over the last twenty years.
For as long as I can remember, Frank Field has been thinking the unthinkable. Now part of Cameron's cost cutting team, some old ideas are being re-cycled in a new supposedly culturally and...
Given that the global market for low-carbon goods and services is already worth over £3trn and growing rapidly, the employment and economic growth opportunities presented by the transformation to a...
Public spending is not falling, it is simply growing at a much slower rate. Technically, running all the key public services for the £700bn on offer should not be difficult. Politically, it will be...
Local authorities can learn lessons about efficient risk management from the private sector, says Andrew Jepp in the latest of our monthly series of sponsored columns
It's quite obvious to me that our ambitious agenda of 'freedom, fairness and responsibility' has to mean slashing public sector pay and pensions. George is in absolute agreement with me on this.
George Osborne has made a social, political and economic calculation with his first Budget. He is gambling on the benefits appearing by the next election
The chancellor said that those earning £21,000 or less would receive an increase of at least £250 a year - enough to buy five rolls of Osborne and Little's cheapest wallpaper
In its Budget yesterday, the coalition government promised to maintain capital spending at the level projected by the last government. What they neglected to say was that Labour had planned to slash...
Rather than moan about the Budget, local government should welcome the opportunity it offers. Local authorities should tell the government they can cut better than Whitehall departments and quangos....
NIGEL EDWARDS | There are plenty of pundits and commentators who assumed or suggested that the reform package proposed by Andrew Lansley during his time in opposition was not particularly radical....
Today saw the last outing for William Gladstone’s famous Budget box, which was made around 150 years ago for one of the most influential figures in British political history.
