There has been general welcome among senior health professionals to the formalising of a relationship between the NHS and the private sector.Secretary of State for Health Alan Milburn has signed an official concordat with the independent sector, which aims to see more NHS patients treated more quickly, using spare private capacity.
Patients will remain as NHS patients, and they will be treated on the basis of clinical need and not ability to pay. 

Parts of the public sector have been brought under severe pressure by the recent abnormal weather, and a unique cross-sector gathering has agreed to urgently define and respond to the lessons to be learned.The Central Local Partnership was formed three years ago to discuss issues which cut across several Whitehall departments - and local government.
It is chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister and attended by Cabinet and other key Ministers and leading members of the Local Government Association. 

Zaccaro S J, Mumford M D, Connelly M S, Marks M A, Gilbert J A
Leadership Quarterly, (USA), Spring 2000 Vol 11 No 1
Start page: 37. No of pages: 28
Describes a measure set for assessing leader performance in cognitive and problem solving terms. Profiles the constructed response format developed from measures originally proposed by the authors in a 1991 paper.