Monthly Archives: March 2011

Obituary: Alfred Saunders

31 March 2011 | Sharon Shelton

Alf Saunders, a former finance director of Tonbridge & Malling Borough Council, died on February 5. Read more...

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Obituary: Richard Tettenborn

31 March 2011 | Brian Smith

Richard Tettenborn, president of CIPFA in 1994/95, died on February 10, aged 70. Read more...

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Make a principle of not avoiding tax, by Steve Richards

31 March 2011 | Steve Richards

The forthcoming National Audit Office review of Revenue & Customs, high-profile alleged tax avoidance cases and Richard Murphy’s ‘There is an alternative’ (Public Finance, October 8, 2010), all raise the question whether we accountants have a conflict of interest on tax. Read more...

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Efficiencies talk is 1970s speak, by Martin Grimwood

31 March 2011 | Martin Grimwood

Why is everyone talking about efficiency reviews and shared services as if they were new ideas? Before moving into a career in international financial consultancy, I worked for seven years in English local government in the 1970s. Read more...

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No fair shares for chief executives, by Heather Wakefield

31 March 2011 | Heather Wakefield

Among the Big Ideas on cost saving from the Communities and Local Government Secretary are council mergers and sharing of chief executives and offices. So ‘Eric Pickles wants neighbouring councils to share chief executives’ ran the headline in the Birmingham Post (21 October 2010). ‘We expect you start merging your departments and having joint offices in order to protect those frontline services’, the Secretary of State told councils in the West Midlands. Read more...

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The Confed and NHS confusion, by David Walker

31 March 2011 | David Walker

The latest state-of-play report from the NHS Confederation is intended to be helpful, but succeeds only in demonstrating just how confused health policy now is, especially over accountability. And, to be fair to Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, how confused it has been for ages. Read more...

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EMA: dividing the shrinking cake, by the Institute for Fiscal Studies

30 March 2011 | Haroon Chowdry and Luke Sibieta

This week the government announced the details of a new bursary scheme to replace the Education Maintenance Allowance. The funding for this will total £180m, of which £15m is reserved for a £1,200 annual grant for vulnerable children (children in care, care leavers and those receiving income support in their own right). The remaining £165m will form a discretionary fund that schools and colleges will distribute to students deemed to have the greatest need. Here we analyse how this fund could be structured and its potential impact on students.

Schools and colleges will be responsible for distributing the new discretionary bursary scheme. Exactly how this scheme will operate is now the subject of an 8-week consultation. A key question for this consultation is how the fund will be distributed to schools and colleges. If it is allocated on a flat-rate for the total number of students at the school or college, then disadvantaged schools or colleges will be able to offer less generous bursaries. Read more

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Where there’s a Will (and John), by Jackie Ashley

29 March 2011 | Jackie Ashley

The two Huttons’ proposals for reforming public sector pay and pensions tackle major areas that are in the government’s sights for cuts. But how fair are they? Read more...

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Public enemies or partners in reform, by Ian Mulheirn

29 March 2011 | Ian Mulheirn

David Cameron ruffled more than a few feathers at the Conservative spring conference in Cardiff in March by identifying civil servants as the ‘enemies of enterprise’. For many politicians, bureaucrat bashing is much easier than banker bashing – after all, civil servants are unlikely to move to Geneva as a result of the political opprobrium heaped upon them. Read more...

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No, prime minister, the civil service is not your nemesis, by Lord Adonis

29 March 2011 | Lord Adonis

A year into office Margaret Thatcher said: ‘If Sir Derek Rayner could teach the civil service to manage itself as well as he manages Marks & Spencer’s 
I should be very pleased.’ In 1999, Tony Blair talked of the ‘forces of conservatism’ and the ‘scars on my back’. But David Cameron’s speech describing civil servants as ‘enemies of enterprise’ and ‘bureaucrats in government departments who concoct… ridiculous rules and regulations’, comes at a particularly bad time – for the government and civil service. Read more...

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