The government narrowly failed to meet its ambitious target to reduce child poverty by a quarter by 2005, but senior sources are confident that the Department for Work and Pensions will achieve its...
Productivity in the NHS is at best stagnant, despite the record sums of money invested in the health service by the government, figures from the Office for National Statistics show.
City-regions offer a new take on local democracy, holding out the idea of governance that reflects the urban economic realities. But these will only work if the hinterland is also involved in...
Not for Scotland the path well trodden. While Westminster endorses market-based public service reforms, the Scottish Executive is ploughing its own furrow on education, health and immigration. Iain...
City regions such as Birmingham and Greater Manchester should be given control of their own regeneration budgets and granted tax-raising powers, according to a report published by the Institute for...
Much of Whitehall's reform agenda is incompatible with its current constitutional position a situation that could be solved by a Civil Service Act, according to the sector's former appointments...
Social mobility has stalled, despite the government's best efforts to raise the aspirations of children from working-class homes. Effective reform of local services will be crucial to turning this...
Town halls are on course for average council tax increases of 4% well within the government's 5% capping threshold but still ahead of the rate of inflation.
Government claims of achieving billions of pounds worth of efficiency savings under the Gershon programme must be treated as provisional and require further validation, a public spending watchdog is...
First Minister Jack McConnell hinted at the prospect of a reorganisation of local government in Scotland as local authorities set council tax levels with an average rise of 3.3%.
& is a problem halved. But not when public bodies can't agree on the best ways to collaborate. Judy Hirst explains why sharing services is so hard to do
When the National Audit Office investigated Whitehall's efficiency savings it found that they weren't all they seemed. Some were aspirational, some weren't efficient and others couldn't be proved....
The Private Finance Initiative has never been a free lunch for the NHS. Now even the Treasury seems to be losing its appetite for large PFI hospital schemes. Noel Plumridge explains why
The NHS Confederation has called for a renewed focus on the treatment of chronic diseases after research revealed that repeated emergency hospital admissions cost the health service £2.3bn a year.
The Department for Work and Pensions has become the first major Whitehall body to sign up to the Office of Government Commerce's new on-line procurement service.
More than half of the savings made under Whitehall's efficiency agenda have effectively been wiped out by an unexpected rise in the cost of staff pensions across two sectors this year, it has emerged.
Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton this week warned that a rise in the basic state pension age is 'inevitable' the first firm indication that his forthcoming retirement proposals could contain...
Armed forces minister Adam Ingram has warned Ministry of Defence civil servants to expect 'a significant number' of compulsory redundancies following his decision to close key sites in Wales and the...
Critics of local government's structure need look no further than Durham to support their case against two-tier councils. Would a unitary approach across England produce less confusion, while...
Public sector organisations should introduce operating and financial reviews, even though the government has dropped plans to make them compulsory for the private sector, CIPFA has said.
Local authorities in England and Scotland have opened the annual trial of strength with the government over council tax with the traditional pleas for more funding and warnings of service cuts.
