MPs have slated the government for reneging on its promise to liberate councils from Whitehall control and demanded a 'major reappraisal' of the draft bill intended to deliver new freedoms.
As industrial action by council workers, train drivers and firefighters escalates are we witnessing a new era of union militancy that echoes the 1979 'winter of discontent'?
The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is to spend the summer battling the rest of Whitehall for a reduction in use of ringfenced grants to councils, now totalling £10bn.
A cross-party report has called for the government to support 'pioneering local initiatives' as well as more realistic funding to secure the future of social care.
The government has moved to tackle bed-blocking with a series of measures designed to make social services more responsive, increase the number of available care home beds and allow more old people...
Local government minister Nick Raynsford faces new arguments over the government's code of practice on the two-tier workforce after the long-awaited draft was published this week.
Local authorities are in line for an average increase of 4.2% in central grant over the next three years, prompting accusations that local services are being pushed to the back of the spending queue.
Local government unions were this week set to unveil plans for a 'widespread escalation of industrial action' after being given the cold shoulder by employers in the wake of the first national strike...
Nick Raynsford has revealed a talent for nifty conjuring tricks in his proposals for reforming the notoriously complex Standard Spending Assessment, the method by which authorities receive their...
Walsall Council averted the threat of government intervention this week after agreeing to remove its entire top management team and appoint an interim chief executive.
District Audit and Inspection Service functions are to be integrated for the first time under a shake-up of internal structures unveiled by the Audit Commission this week.
Whitehall departments that benefited from Gordon Brown's largesse in Monday's long-awaited Spending Review will be expected to meet 'demanding' national targets.
Dan Corry, the former special adviser to local government secretary Stephen Byers, is to take over as executive director of the New Local Government Network.
Just one in four local authorities believes that it will be granted greater financial freedoms as a result of the Comprehensive Performance Assessment framework, research has revealed.
Relations between central and local government need to be radically transformed and much of Whitehall's power relinquished to town halls, Iain Duncan Smith has told local government leaders.
Union leaders have branded as a 'disgrace' Tony Blair's refusal to intervene in the local government pay dispute as the first national strike by council workers in 23 years looms next week.
'Sometimes the civil service is very efficient. Within five minutes of a secretary of state going, you have your redundancy papers,' says Dan Corry, the former and now infamous special adviser to...
County councils could lose up to £800m as a result of proposed reforms to the distribution of the Standard Spending Assessment unveiled by the government on July 5.
The introduction of a controversial accounting standard that could expose billions of pounds of pension fund liabilities in the public sector has been delayed, it was announced this week.
Local government leaders' patience finally snapped this week as they hit out at ministers for forcing through the Comprehensive Performance Assessment regime without delivering the extra freedoms...
The majority of the public believe moves to allow the private and voluntary sectors as well as overseas operators to treat NHS patients will improve standards of care, according to a Mori poll for...
