The Department of Education and Employment has published a business plan for 1998/99. In it, the department is set a range of challenges aimed at delivering targets for Britain’s schools, adult learning, a more skilled workforce, and implementing Welfare to Work proposals.The Department admits that it’s an ambitious agenda which will required everyone working for the organisation to be effective, and to adopt increasingly outward-looking, creative and collaborative approaches.

Thirty four further areas of Britain have been invited to bid to become Health Action Zones, which the government are sponsoring to speed up and improve health care provision.
The 34 areas could join the second wave of urban areas, towns and cities receiving a total of ?30 million pounds of extra NHS money.