A fire service spokesman said more than 25 factory workers on site were uninjured in a fire at a big car parts plant – and a Time and Attendance UK Fire Roll Call system would keep staff safety paramount in a similar occurrence. The Linamar factory in Swansea suffered an overnight blaze which started in the workshop area, and spread to parts of the plant and the control room.
All of the nine Regional Development Agencies will be closed down as part of the government’s deficit-busting cuts, and already interested parties are working on ways to fill the gap that will be left by the organisations. Plans to shut down England’s nine RDAs, set up by the Labour government to drive forward economic growth, and replace them with Local Enterprise Partnerships were detailed in the last budget.
A cost-saving idea being mooted for under fire local authorities is to share chief executives. The coalition recently discovered a £1.5 billion black hole in the public finances. Hence, as an alternative to cutting front line services, Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles suggested: “It’s obviously a bad week to raise things that Germany does better than us, but they’ve really got the idea in local government.
Some areas of the public sector have pre-empted this autumn’s Government cuts by not taking on staff. Devon and Cornwall Police will not recruit for the next 18 months; while its Police Authority, which governs the force, said it would be reducing the number of public meetings it holds over the next 12 months in a bid to become more efficient.
The Government wants to close down the Audit Commission within three years in order to save the taxpayer about £50m a year. The measure comes as part of the Prime Minister’s "Big Society" plans for more transparent government and an increased say for the public in how councils are run.
Showing just how out of control the amount of money sloshing about in football is, Portsmouth FC could have ended up in liquidation. The club have survived a High Court challenge from the taxman after HM Revenue & Customs had asked the court to block proposals that would have helped ‘Pompey’ out of administration. HMRC did this because it thought the CVA system was unfair as certain creditors could claim much more than others.
Prime Minister David Cameron’s promises to attack what he sees as a bloated public sector came to fruition when a cull of taxpayer-funded organisations was announced. Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, said that half of the ‘arms-length bodies’ run by his department were to be abolished.
In order to drive down costs senior policemen are proposing to get rid of thousands of injured officers. The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) have drafted a scheme that sees severance packages being offered to around 15,000 officers whose injuries mean they are no longer able to work on the front line. Under present rules police officers cannot be made redundant, but Acpo is urging the Government to change that.
Like its counterpart south of the border, the Scottish public sector is set for huge cuts, a government commissioned report said this week. It warned that 60,000 jobs would be lost, and it also called for an immediate review of all free universal services. The Independent Budget Review Group recommended no public services should be spared from budget cuts.
It appears the credit crunch has bitten at one of TV’s most popular peak time shows. It has been hotly tipped that the pay structure for this year’s ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ has been altered so the competitors will only be paid per dance. It will ensure that if one the stars who dance with the professionals has leaden feet and is voted out early on, he or she does not get a big six-figure payment.