Hundreds of millions of pounds held in dormant bank accounts will soon be used to fund local youth services under plans revealed by the Treasury this week.
Gordon Brown has been accused of 'sneaking out' the news that the Comprehensive Spending Review will be delayed until the autumn and of trying to 'close down' a public debate over its conclusions.
All children should be able to attend good schools, or at least have an equal opportunity of doing so. But that's not the case at present. The controversial new code of admissions aims to even the...
More than £12bn of public funds is spent every year on support for small business but to what effect? A Conservative Party task force found the programmes to be ineffective, bureaucratic and...
Last week's draft Climate Change Bill shows the UK government is serious about tackling global warming. But it needs to go even further, argues Stuart Williams
The chancellor has paved the way for the majority of Private Finance Initiative schemes to be brought on to the public sector balance sheet a move that could jeopardise his sustainable investment...
Benefits need to be made available for all disabled children and taken up by more families if the government is to eradicate child poverty by 2020, a leading think-tank has warned.
Local authorities and NHS trusts might be forced to reduce their carbon count through a mandatory emissions trading scheme, under legislation published this week.
Sir Michael Lyons this week denied that his proposed overhaul of town hall funding would initiate massive hikes in council taxes on expensive homes, and revealed that a long-term plan would accompany...
It no longer seems so much 'if' as 'when'. Bizarre, amazing, doomed call it what you will, but the Rev Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness look set to become first and deputy first ministers of...
The Parliamentary and health service Ombudsman has found the Department of Health guilty of 'maladministration' in its bungled attempts to correct an earlier error.
The cost of building and improving the country's major roads is accelerating faster than the average motorway driver, the National Audit Office said this week.
NHS staff in Scotland are to receive their entire 2.5% pay increase in April following a surprise decision that conflicts with the phased deal on offer to their counterparts in England and Wales.
Public sector managers are to be made more accountable for the advice they give to elected members, Tom McCabe, the Scottish finance minister, has disclosed.
The government's failure to produce comprehensive estimates of the full cost of London's 2012 Olympics is 'a recipe for an open-ended cheque book', an influential MP has warned.
GPs should be able to provide their patients with free social care services, even if their local authority has deemed them ineligible for such help, the Department of Health has said.
The prime minister and chancellor this week backed a radical welfare overhaul that will hand over responsibility for millions of long-term benefit claimants and billions in public cash to private...
Thousands of female civil servants are poised to launch equal pay claims following the failure of departments to address glaring disparities in salaries legal challenges that could cost the...
The Department for Work and Pensions has tried to improve its call centres after a damning PAC report last year. But has it done enough? Justin Pugsley reports
Ministers would set the education and community care budgets of every council in Scotland and take responsibility for managing these services under a radical plan drawn up by a leading civil servant.
The emergency use of police cells to tackle prison overcrowding equates to almost half of the Prison Service's spare capacity, the Home Office revealed this week.
Ministers must commit Whitehall departments to new joint Public Service Agreements if they are to tackle the growing gap between unemployment and skills in the North of England compared with the...
NHS watchers turning to the service's third-quarter financial report last week were bemused. Despite Department of Health claims that NHS finances were more transparent than ever, no fewer than three...
