Education and Employment Secretary David Blunkett has changed the rules on New Deal eligibility to avoid there being a shortage of cheap labour over the Millennium holiday.He’s agreed that young unemployed people will be able to take short term Millennium jobs, without losing the chance of help and support under the New Deal.
The easing of the regulations will also be open to older workers in the pilot New Deal 25 plus and New Deal 50 plus areas. 

The Government has announced its intention to beef up training for school governors.It is extending the role of governors, and giving some parent representatives the power to sit on education committees of local councils.
The Government is recognising that for an enhanced role, enhanced training will be required. A National Strategy for Training and Support will be developed, to try to standardise what’s on offer to governors across the country. 

This Audit Commission update on the 1995 report looks at the changes hospitals have made to the storage, archiving, structure and content of health records. It includes the results of a recent survey with feedback from 225 trusts. It notes improvements in retrieval rates of casenotes for use at outpatient clinics, fewer libraries storing hospital records, and an improved standard of record keeping. The higher status of records managers has helped bring about improvements.