There was an interesting little piece in the Guardian few days ago suggesting that local authorities could save £51 million by moving some council employees to Open Office* and ODF**, and away from Microsoft Office and their document format, with the total savings rocketing to £200 million if every council employee in the country moved

A CONTROVERSIAL body established to raise funds for civic building projects has delivered £111 million in savings and benefits, it has been claimed.

Proposals for sweeping changes to local government workers' pension arrangements are to be unveiled on Tuesday by the country's largest local authority pension provider

It MAY not have been meant as a slap in the face to Scotland's post-crash banking establishment. But that is how many will see it.

The government’s position is that prison does not work. It aims to reduce prison numbers and now Ken Clarke has announced that further savings will be made to the criminal justice budget. The Times reports (£) that Clarke will continue Labour’s policy of closing courts; 103 magistrates courts and 54 county courts will shut-up shop. Whitehall and Westminster whisper concern that th...

But it has not been a pointless exercise. Two-thirds of ideas come from public servants themselves, who may not suggest abolishing their own jobs, but do come forward with good practical savings drawn from experience: water cooler and paper savings, IT procurement, modifications to telephone exchanges, making people pay for frivolous

Republished from the Broad Oak Blog: UK investors who are concerned about the threat of inflation have recently (19 July) lost access to an ideal solution, the NS&I Index-Linked Savings Certificate. Now a building society is offering something to fill that gap in the market. National Counties are marketing an index-linked cash ISA. This is not quite the same as NS&I's product,...

George Osborne raised a question mark over the future of universal benefits to pensioners and parents as he argued that Britain's biggest squeeze on public spending since the war would be "fundamentally progressive and fair"

SCOTLAND could save £1 billion in a decade by a mass merger of local authorities, the former head of the Accounts Commission for Scotland has said.

In this time of fiscal retrenchment, all parts of government must do their bit. But the private finance initiative, in particular, offers potentially huge savings, writes Jesse Norman