News

Eurosceptic employment minister Priti Patel escalates row over civil service impartiality in the run-up to the European Union referendum – but former cabinet secretary Lord O'Donnell says guidance issued by his successor Sir Jeremy Heywood last week is "pretty well right"

Senior Tory says Treasury should take the lead on official stats as Cabinet Office and UK Statistics Authority "have been asleep at the wheel"

BT examines the role of IT in the future delivery of justice.

The Big Lottery Fund has channelled billions of pounds in proceeds from the National Lottery to good causes. Colin Marrs quizzes chief executive Dawn Austwick on the interplay between her organisation’s priorities and the government’s

"There are always ways to make government better, always ways to make sure that the taxes of people are better spent," says chancellor, against gloomy global economic backdrop

Cabinet secretary will be questioned by the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee on Tuesday, after ministers in favour of leaving the EU question guidance on use of official resources

Pacac says government spends “considerable amounts of money” producing accounts even thought it "not clear that they are of any use to select committees, or to the public"

Lord Kerslake says it is “impossible to see why any fair person would want to remove this very basic service” - and vows to "sing the national anthem" if the government shelves plans to end automatic "check off" of fees from civil servants' pay packets

Cabinet office minister Matt Hancock says the ONS - which moved out of London in the mid-2000s - will stay in Newport to to act as a "big data hub" in the region

793-page investigation into response to Savile's serial offending cites warnings from former cabinet secretary Lord Butler over plans to award TV and radio star a knighthood

£23.2m contract to develop a new generation of GPS tags scrapped because it has proved “too challenging”. The MoJ tells CSW it still expects to see benefits of spending to date on the deal

"One of our most important collective responsibilities is to improve the diversity of our senior leadership," says cabinet secretary, as new senior network launched

“All we’re asking is for the Met Office to be able to allocate what it needs to fund staff by industry standards,” Prospect’s Gordon Hutchinson tells CSW, as hundreds of Met Office staff set up picket lines

Civil service chief executive John Manzoni talks to Suzannah Brecknell about leadership, transforming government and building relationships with the private sector

Sue Higgins, executive leader at the National Audit Office, explains why the public spending watchdog decided to look into the relationship between ministers and perm secs – and why the NAO believes the incentives for accounting officers to prioritise value for money are still too weak

Thompson to succeed Lin Homer as chief executive, while tax specialist Edward Troup to chair the board's executive committee

Public Accounts Committee criticises lack of transparency over HM Revenue and Customs' £130m, ten-year tax deal with Google – but says department has taken "a step in the right direction" in pledging reform of penalty regime

Peter Wilkinson, director of rail passenger services at the DfT, comes under fire after reportedly telling commuters they had "got to break" industrial action over changes to train drivers' terms

Pilling – who served at the Prison Service, Department of Health, and in the top job at the NIO – has been drafted in to check up on the post-Leveson press regulator set up by industry

The legal team at the government-owned British Business Bank has brought together public and private sector expertise to create a new organisation with a challenging mandate – to boost lending to thousands of small and medium-sized businesses. Shanika Amarasekara, general counsel for the bank, shares her team's experience 

Cabinet secretary writes to perm secs to confirm that pro-Brexit ministers will not have access to civil service briefings on the referendum

Microsoft takes a look at how technology can be used to improve the patient experience

MPs say closure of BIS Sheffield will result in "loss of vital expertise, shrink the civil service talent pool and reduce the variety of experiences that contribute to policy-making"

After better-than-expected Spending Review settlement, Foreign Office perm sec says new review to make FCO "more flexible" will not be ignored