Local authorities’ borrowing from the government has fallen by more than a third in one year, while deposits with the Treasury’s Debt Management Office are rocketing after the Icelandic banking fiasco
The Audit Commission has warned that unemployment could remain high for three years after the end of the recession despite positive initiatives from council leaders to mitigate the effects of the...
The Private Finance Initiative was thought to be in trouble earlier on in the recession. But it has proved resilient to new accounting standards, and the banks' credit margins on projects have soared...
Opposition parties have accused the Scottish Government of ‘financial incompetence’ and ‘fantasy finance’ after Finance Secretary John Swinney set out his case for a North Sea oil fund for the...
As the recession hits high streets across the country, the impact on local authorities’ revenue can only get worse. Councils need to take stock of the situation and keep calm under fire, argue David...
A report on social mobility by former Cabinet minister Alan Milburn, published on July 21, has said that access to top professions such as medicine and the law is increasingly closed off to all but...
With mass manufacturing redundancies back
on the agenda, there needs to be a permanent task force to deal with the economic shocks. David Bailey, Caroline Chapain and Stephen Hall report
A Lords inquiry has issued the latest in a series of official reports calling for the scrapping of the controversial 30-year-old funding mechanism for the UK nations. But replacing it will not be easy
Public spending cuts of 8.5%, involving ‘initial reductions’ of 17,300 jobs, have been proposed to the Irish government to help get its public finances under control.
UK Financial Investments is meant to be looking after the taxpayers’ massive stake in the country’s failed banks. But concerns are mounting about the Treasury agency’s ‘hands off’ approach. Paul...
Experts have warned that adding defence spending to the politically sensitive areas to be spared from cuts would require more than 16% to be slashed from other Whitehall budgets over three years.
Public sector debt hit a record high of 56.5% of gross domestic product at the end of June, figures from the Office for National Statistics have revealed
The National Audit Office has refused to sign off the Treasury’s 2008/09 resource accounts in full because Parliament had not authorised £24bn of expenditure as part of the banking bail-out package
The Trades Union Congress has warned of 200,000 future public sector job losses, as economists predict that £80bn would need to be slashed from spending to restore the public finances.
A new financial watchdog is to be set up to monitor financial stability and respond to emerging risks under measures set out in the banking white paper.
Experts have questioned whether a public sector pay freeze would do much to restore the public finances and have warned that job losses will be needed to save more money.
The Conservatives will not set out their public spending plans because they ‘haven’t seen the books’, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Philip Hammond told Public Finance at the CIPFA conference...
