Economy

Jane Platt is chief executive of NS&I, Britain’s venerable state-owned savings bank. She talks to Joshua Chambers about keeping rival financial institutions sweet, diversity in the City, and the future for arm’s-length bodies.

As chief executive of the Shareholder Executive, Mark Russell is responsible for overseeing the running of more than 20 government-owned businesses. Joshua Chambers meets him to discuss transparency, pay and privatisation

CSW sets out the Spending Review’s main implications for each department below, covering the changes in their resource and capital DEL, their administration budgets, and explaining the main policy and operational challenges facing civil servants.

The coalition’s Green Investment Bank has been tasked with boosting private investment in the green economy – a high-potential sector constrained by limited finance. Winnie Agbonlahor meets chief executive Shaun Kingsbury.

Battered departmental administration budgets received a further pounding in today’s 2015-16 spending round, with the Home Office (HO), Cabinet Office (CO) and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) seeing punishing settlements that will accelerate civil service cuts as we approach the end of the Parliament.

The Labour party would consider merging “management and bureaucracy” across government departments, agencies and other public services as part of a “zero based spending review” if it wins power at the next election, shadow chancellor Ed Balls said yesterday.

Aeronautics are a good example of a new form of partnership between government and industry. Suzannah Brecknell looks at the levers which can enable Whitehall and business to effectively work togeth

The Cabinet Office has established a new structure, chaired by cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, to improve government’s long term planning, Civil Service World can reveal.

Government must plan ahead for long-term social, economic and environmental change, so it employs ‘horizon scanners’ to predict likely scenarios. Joshua Chambers looks at what the future holds for this unusual profession.

Under the coalition’s open data agenda, the trading funds are being encouraged to release more information without charge. But if they give away their biggest asset for free, how can they earn a living? Winnie Agbonlahor reports.

The annual drama of the Budget is a dysfunctional relic and should be scrapped, says Julian McCrae. Ministers and civil servants have bigger – and more nourishing – fish to fry.

The civil service pay cap will continue for an extra year, limiting pay increases to an average of one per cent per year until 2015-16, and the government will also seek to end automatic pay rises for all civil servants, chancellor George Osborne announced in his Budget last week.