The government was this week accused of being the country's most wasteful landlord as new figures show that almost one in five public sector properties is empty.
The National Assembly for Wales has announced an extra £2m for children's services following a damning report that traced two decades of child abuse in local authority homes.
Housing associations have been promised lighter regulation and less bureaucracy as the Housing Corporation studies new ways to cope with the growing number of registered social landlords (RSLs).
A new video featuring ethnic minority civil servants will be taken into local communities to try to change Whitehall's 'all white' image, Cabinet Office minister Mo Mowlam announced this week.
The government has insisted that legislation creating directly elected mayors will still be law by the summer, despite this week's defeat in the House of Lords of part of the Local Government Bill.
Chris Woodhead, the chief inspector for schools, has warned that performance-related pay will have little real impact on teachers' earnings, because one in ten head teachers are incapable of...
Cabinet secretary Sir Richard Wilson this week admitted there was scope for changing the way government departments are funded, and that they could even consider bidding for money from a central 'pot...
Receipts on France's state-run Pari-Mutuel (PMU) horse race betting network are rising, which is good news for the French ministry of finance. The bad news is that the rise is only slight and the...
Ministers will lead a robust reaffirmation of government policy at Labour's Local Governance conference this weekend when they will tell local authorities in blunt terms to 'reform or die'.
National Health Service bed numbers came under renewed scrutiny this week. A spot check revealed that patients were waiting on trolleys much longer than the Department of Health's four-hour limit.
The NHS is failing to meet its New Deal target and there is evidence that a significant number of health service employers have yet to commit themselves to the initiative.
Conservatives in local government this week defended the sacking of John Redwood, one of the few high-profile members of William Hague's shadow cabinet, claiming he was part of the 'party's past'.
By Maria McHale Education leaders have warned the government that its standards agenda will suffer if councils are forced to fund in full the 3.3% teachers' pay rise announced this week. Education...
French, Italian, Portuguese and Belgian environment ministers were gathering in Brussels this week to back calls for 'Car-Free Day 2000' to be extended across the European Union. The launch on...
Labour is due to give local authorities an extra £35m in this year's finance settlement but with a warning from ministers that it should be used to curb council tax increases.
The Audit Commission should have its own House of Commons select committee in order to give the public sector watchdog's reports more weight, it was proposed this week.
Gordon Brown has huge room for manoeuvre between tax cuts, spending increases and debt repayment, according to the annual unofficial guide to the chancellor's budget options published this week by...
A national intelligence unit set up by the government to attack organised benefit fraud is to combine the knowledge of the Inland Revenue, police and immigration authorities.
